


PLibrary of Congress.^ I 




.J^' UNITED S TATES OF AMERICA.,:', i 



Riding Recollections 



9 #■ • 




" Would push her nose into my pockets in search of bread 

and sugar." (Page 13.) 

Riding Recollections.] [Frontispiece 



Ridmg 
Recollections 



By 

'>*' Whyte-Melville 

Author of "Market Harborough," '' Katerfelto," "Cerise, 
"Satanella," etc., etc. 



Illustrated by John Charlton 



New York 
Longmans, Green & Co. 



1899 






49279 




SDeliicateli 

ON BEHALF OP "THE BKIDLED AND SADDLED' 

TO THE 

"BOOTED AND SrURRED." 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. 

Author's Preface . . . . 






PAOB 

9 


I. Kindness . . . . . 




. 


11 


II. Coercion . . , . , 






21 


III. The Use of the Bridle 






41 


IV. The Abuse of the Spur . 






65 


V. Hand ..... 






77 


VI. Seat ..... 






98 


vn. Valour ..... 






112 


VIII. Discretion .... 






128 


IX. Irish Hunters 






146 


X. Thoroughbred Horses . 






164 


XI. Biding to Fox-hounds 






. 180 


XII. Eiding at Stag-hounds 






. 201 


XIII. The Provinces .... 






. 218 


XIV. The Shires .... 






. 233 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

As in the choice of a horse and a wife a man 
must please himself, ignoring the opinion and 
advice of friends, so in the governing of each it 
is unwise to follow out any fixed system of 
discipline. Much depends on temper, education, 
mutual understanding and surrounding circum- 
stances. Courage must not be heated to reck- 
lessness, caution should be implied rather than 
exhibited, and confidence is simply a question of 
time and place. It is as difl&cult to explain by 
precept or demonstrate by example how force, 
balance, and persuasion ought to be combined in 
horsemanship, as to teach the art of floating in 
the water or swimming on the back. Practice 
in either case alone makes perfect, and he is the 
most apt pupil who brings to his lesson a good 
opinion of his own powers and implicit reliance 
on that which carries him. Trust the element 
or the animal and you ride aloft superior to 
danger ; but with misgiving comes confusion, 
effort, breathlessness, possibly collapse and 
defeat. Morally and physically, there is no 



10 AUTHOR'S F BE FACE 

creature so nervous as a man out of his 
depth. 

In offering the following pages to the public, 
the writer begs emphatically to disclaim any 
intention of laying down the law on such a 
subject as horsemanship. Every man who wears 
spurs believes himself more or less an adept in 
the art of riding ; and it would be the height of 
presumption for one who has studied that art as 
a pleasure and not a profession to dictate for the 
ignorant, or enter the lists of argument with the 
wise. All he can lay claim to is a certain 
amount of experience, the result of many happy 
hours spent with the noble animal under him, 
for some uncomfortable minutes when mutual 
indiscretion has caused that position to be 
reversed. 

If the few hints he can offer should prove 
serviceable to the beginner he will feel amply 
rewarded, and will only ask to be kindly remem- 
bered hereafter in the hour of triumph when the 
tyro of a riding-school has become the pride of 
a hunting-field — judicious, cool, daring, and 
skilful, light of hand, firm of seat, thoroughly 
at home in the saddle, a very Centaur — 

" Encorpsed and demi-natured 
"With the brave beast." 



EIDING EECOLLECTIONS 



CHAPTER I 

KINDNESS 

In our dealings with the brute creation, it cannot 
be too much insisted on that mutual confidence 
is only to be established by mutual good-will. 
The perceptions of the beast must be raised to 
their highest standard, and there is no such 
enemy to intelligence as fear. Reward should 
be as the daily food it eats, punishment as the 
medicine administered on rare occasions, un- 
willingly, and but when absolute necessity 
demands. The horse is of all domestic animals 
most susceptible to anything like discomfort or 
ill-usage. Its nervous system, sensitive and 
highly strung, is capable of daring effort under 
excitement, but collapses utterly in any new and 
strange situation, as if paralysed by apprehen- 
sions of the unknown. 

u 



12 RIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

Can anything be more helpless than the young 
horse you take out hunting the first time he 
finds himself in a bog ? Compare his frantic 
struggles and sudden prostration with the dis- 
creet conduct of an Exmoor pony in the same 
predicament. The one terrified by unaccus- 
tomed danger, and relying instinctively on the 
speed that seems his natural refuge, plunges 
wildly forward, sinks to his girths, his shoulders, 
finally unseats his rider, and settles down, with- 
out further exertion, in the stupid apathy of 
despair. The other, born and bred in the wild 
west country, picking its scanty keep from a foal 
off the treacherous surface of a Devonshire moor, 
either refuses altogether to trust the quagmire, 
or shortens its stride, collects its energies, 
chooses the soundest turfs that afford foothold, 
and failing these, flaps its way out on its side, to 
scramble into safety with scarce a quiver or a 
snort. It has been there before ! Herein lies 
the whole secret. 

Some day your young one will be as calm, as 
wise, as tractable. Alas ! that when his dis- 
cretion has reached its prime his legs begin to 
fail ! Therefore cultivate his intellect — I use 
the word advisedly — even before you enter on 
the development of his physical powers. Nature 
and good keep will provide for these, but to make 
him man's willing friend and partner you must 
give him the advantage of man's company and 



KINDNESS 13 

man's instruction. From the day you slip a 
halter over his ears he should be encouraged to 
look to you, like a child, for all his little wants 
and simple pleasures. He should come canter- 
ing up from the farthest corner of the paddock 
when he hears your voice, should ask to have his 
nose rubbed, his head stroked, his neck patted, 
with those honest, pleading looks which make 
the confidence of a dumb creature so touching ; 
and before a roller has been put on his back, or 
a snaffle in his mouth he should be convinced 
that everything you do to him is right, and that 
it is impossible for yotc, his best friend, to cause 
him the least uneasiness or harm. 

I once owned a mare that would push her nose 
into my pockets in search of bread and sugar, 
would lick my face and hands like a dog, or 
suffer me to cling to any part of her limbs and 
body while she stood perfectly motionless. On 
one occasion, when I hung in the stirrup after 
a fall, she never stirred on rising, till by a suc- 
cession of laborious and ludicrous efforts I could 
swing myself back into the saddle, with my foot 
still fast, though hounds were running hard and 
she loved hunting dearly in her heart. As a 
friend remarked at the time, " The little mare 
seems very fond of you, or there might have 
been a bother ! " 

Now this affection was but the result of 
petting, sugar, kind and encouraging words, 



14 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

particularly at her fences, and a rigid abstinence 
from abuse of the bridle and the spur. I shall 
presently have something to say about both these 
instruments, but I may remark in the meantime 
that many more horses than people suppose will 
cross a country safely with a loose rein. The 
late Colonel William Greenwood, one of the 
finest riders in the world, might be seen out 
hunting with a single curb-bridle, such as is 
called " a hard-and-sharp " and commonly used 
only in the streets of London or the Park. The 
present Lord Spencer, of whom it is enough to 
say that he hunts one pack of his own hounds in 
Northamptonshire, and is always in the same 
field with them, never seems to have a horse 
pull, or until it is tired, even lean on his hand. 
I have watched both these gentlemen intently 
to learn their secret, but I regret to say without 
avail. 

This, however, is not the present question. 
Long before a bridle is fitted on the colt's head 
he should have so thoroughly learned the habit 
of obedience, that it has become a second instinct, 
and to do what is required of him seems as 
natural as to eat when he is hungry or lie down 
when he wants to sleep. 

This result is to be attained in a longer or 
shorter time, according to different tempers, but 
the first and most important step is surely gained 
when we have succeeded in winning that affec- 




"Always in the same field with them." 
Riding Recollections.] 



[Page 14 



KINDNESS 16 

tion which nurses and children call '' cupboard 
love." Like many amiable characters on two 
legs, the quadruped is shy of acquaintances but 
genial with friends. Make him understand that 
you are his best and wisest, that all you do con- 
duces to his comfort and happiness, be careful at 
first not to deceive or disappoint him, and you 
will find his reasoning powers quite strong 
enough to grasp the relations of cause and 
effect. 

In a month or six weeks he will come to your 
call, and follow you about like a dog. Soon he 
will let you lift his feet, handle him all over, pull 
his tail, and lean your weight on any part of 
his body, without alarm or resentment. When 
thoroughly familiar with your face, your voice, 
and the motions of your limbs, you may back 
him with perfect safety, and he will move as 
soberly under you in any place to which he is 
accustomed as the oldest horse in your stable. 

Do not forget, however, that education should 
be gradual as moon-rise, perceptible, not in pro- 
gress, but result. I recollect one morning riding 
to covert with a Dorsetshire farmer whose horses, 
bred at home, were celebrated as timber- jumpers 
even in that most timber- jumping of countries. 
I asked him how they arrived at this proficiency 
without breaking somebody's neck, and he im- 
parted his plan. 

The colt, it seemed, ran loose from a yearling 



16 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

in the owner's straw yard, but fed in a lofty out- 
house, across the door of which was placed a 
single tough ashen bar that would not break 
under a bullock. This was laid on the ground 
till the young one had grown thoroughly accus- 
tomed to it, and then raised very gradually to 
such a height as was less trouble to jump than 
clamber over. At three-feet the two-year old 
thought no more of the obstacle than a girl 
does of her skipping-rope. After that, it was 
heightened an inch every week, and it needs no 
ready reckoner to tell us at the end of six months 
how formidable a leap the animal voluntarily 
negotiated three times a day. 

" It's never put no higher," continued my 
informant; "I'm an old man now, and that's 
good enough for me." 

I should think it was ! A horse that can leap 
five feet of timber in cold blood is not likely to 
be pounded, while still unblown, in any part of 
England I have yet seen. 

Now the Dorsetshire farmer's system was 
sound, and based on common sense. As 5^ou 
bend the twig so grows the tree, therefore pre- 
pare your pupil from the first for the purpose 
you intend him to serve hereafter. An Arab 
foal, as we know, brought up in the Bedouin's 
tent, like another child, among the Bedouin's 
children, is the most docile of its kind, and I 
cannot but think that if he lived in our houses 



KINDNESS 17 

and we took as much notice of him, the horse 
would prove quite as sagacious as the dog ; but 
we must never forget that to harshness or intimi- 
dation he is the most sensitive of creatures, and 
even when in fault should be rather cautioned 
than reproved. 

An ounce of illustration is worth a pound of 
argument, and the following example best con- 
veys the spirit in which our brave and willing 
servant should be treated by his lord. 

Many years ago, when he hunted the Cottes- 
more country. Sir Eichard Sutton's hounds had 
been running hard from Glooston Wood along 
the valley under Cranehoe by Slawston to Holt. 
After thirty minutes or so over this beautiful, 
but exceedingly stiff line, their heads went up 
and they came to a check, possibly from their 
own dash and eagerness, certainly, at that pace 
and amongst those fences, 7iot from being over- 
ridden. 

" Turn 'em, Ben ! " exclaimed Sir Eichard, 
with a dirty coat, and Hotspur in a lather, but 
determined not to lose a moment in getting after 
his fox. 

"Yes, Sir Eichard," answered Morgan, run- 
ning his horse without a moment's hesitation 
at a flight of double-posts and rails, with a 
ditch in the middle and one on each side ! 
The good grey, having gone in front from the 
find, was perhaps a little blown, and dropping 

2 



18 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

his hind legs in the farthest ditch, rolled very 
handsomely into the next field. 

"It's not your fault, old man!" said Ben, 
patting his favourite on the neck as they rose 
together in mutual good-will, adding in the 
same breath, while he leapt to the saddle, and 
Tranby acknowledged the line — " Forrard on, 
Sir Eichard ! — Hoic together, hoic ! You'll 
have him directly, my beauties ! He's a Quorn 
fox, and he'll do you good ! " 

I had always considered Ben Morgan an 
unusually fine rider. For the first time, I 
began to understand wliy his horse never failed 
to carry him so willingly and so well. 

I do not remember whether Dick Webster 
was out with us that day, but I am sure if he 
was he has not forgotten it, and I mention him 
as another example of daring horsemanship 
combined with an imperturbable good-humour, 
almost verging on buffoonery, which seems to 
accept the most dangerous falls as enhancing 
the fun afforded by a delightful game of romps. 
His annual exhibition of prowess at the Islington 
horse show has made his shrewd comical face 
so familiar to the public that his name, without 
farther comment, is enough to recall the presence 
and bearing of the man — his quips and cranks 
and merry jests, his shrill whistle and ready 
smile, his strong seat and light, skilful hand, 
but above all his untiring patience and un~ 



KINDNESS 19 

failing kindness with the most restive and 
refractory of pupils. Dick, like many other 
good fellows, is not so young as he was, but 
he will probably be an unequalled rider at 
eighty, and I am quite sure that if he lives 
to the age of Methuselah, the extreme of 
senile irritability will never provoke him to 
lose his temper with a horse. 

Presence of mind under difficulties is the one 
quality that in riding makes all the difference 
between getting off with a scramble and going 
down with a fall. If unvaried kindness has 
taught your horse to place confidence in his 
rider, he will have his wits about him, and 
provide for your safety as for his own. When 
left to himself, and not flurried by the fear of 
punishment, even an inexperienced hunter 
makes surprising efforts to keep on his legs, 
and it is not too much to say that while his 
wind lasts, the veteran is almost as difficult 
to catch tripping as a cat. I have known 
horses drop their hind legs on places scarcely 
affording foothold for a goat, but in all such 
feats they have been ridden by a lover of the 
animal, who trusts it implicitly, and rules by 
kindness rather than fear. 

I will not deny that there are cases in which 
the suaviter in modo must be supplemented by 
the fortiter in re. Still the insubordination of 
ignorance is never wholly inexcusable, and great 



20 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

discretion must be used in repressing even the 
most violent of outbreaks. If severity is abso- 
lutely required, be sure to temper justice with 
mercy, remembering that, in brute natures at 
least, the more you spare the rod, the less you 
spoil the child ! 



CHAPTER II 

COEBCION 

I RECOLLECT, in years gone by, an old and 
pleasant comrade used to declare that "to be 
in a rage was almost as contemptible as to be 
in a funk!" Doubtless the passion of anger, 
though less despised than that of fear, is so 
far derogatory to the dignity of a man that 
it deprives him temporarily of reason, the very 
quality which confers sovereignty over the brute. 
When a magician is without his talisman the 
slaves he used to rule will do his bidding no 
longer. When we say of such a one that he 
has "lost his head," we no more expect him 
to steer a judicious course than a ship that 
has lost her rudder. Both are the prey of 
circumstances — at the mercy of winds and 
waves. Therefore, however hard you are 
compelled to hit, be sure to keep your temper. 
Strike in perfect good-humour, and in the right 
place. Many people cannot encounter resist- 

21 



22 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

ance of any kind without anger, even a differ- 
ence of opinion in conversation is sufficient to 
rouse their bile ; but such are seldon winners 
in argument or in fight. Let them also leave 
education alone. Nature never meant them to 
teach the young idea how to shoot or hunt, 
or do anything else ! 

It is the cold-blooded and sagacious wrestler 
who takes the prize, the calm and imperturbable 
player who wins the game. In all struggles for 
supremacy, excitement only produces flurry, and 
flurry means defeat. 

Who ever saw Mr. Anstruther Thompson in 
a passion, though, like every other huntsman 
and master of hounds, he must often have found 
his temper sorely tried? And yet, when punish- 
ment is absolutely necessary to extort obedience 
from the equine rebel, no man can administer 
it more severely, either from the saddle or the 
box. But whether double-thonging a restive 
wheeler, or "having it out" with a resolute 
buck- jumper, the operation is performed with 
the same pleasant smile, and when one of the 
adversaries preserves calmness and common 
sense, the fight is soon over, and the victory 
gained. 

It is not every man, however, who possesses 
this gentleman's iron nerve and powerful frame. 
For most of us, it is well to remember, before 
engaging in such contests, that defeat is abso- 



COEBCION 23 

lute ruin. We must be prepared to fight it out 
to the bitter end, and if we are not sure of our 
own firmness, either mental or physical, it is 
well to temporise, and try to win by diplomacy 
the terms we dare not wrest by force. If the 
latter alternative must needs be accepted, in 
this as in most stand-up fights, it will be found 
that the first blow is half the battle. The rider 
should take his horse short by the head and let 
him have two or three stingers with a cutting 
whip — not more — particularly, if on a thorough- 
bred one, as low down the flanks as can be 
reached, administered without warning, and in 
quick succession, sitting back as prepared for 
the plunge into the air that will inevitably 
follow, keeping his horse's head well up the 
while to prevent buck-jumping. He should 
then turn the animal round and round half-a- 
dozen times, till it is confused, and start it off 
at speed in any direction where there is room for 
a gallop. Blown, startled, and intimidated, he 
will in all probability find his pupil perfectly 
amenable to reason when he pulls up, and 
should then coax and soothe him into an 
equable frame of mind once more. Such, 
however, is an extreme case. It is far better 
to avoid the ultima ratio. In equitation, as 
in matrimony, there should never arise the 
first quarrel. Obedience, in horses, ought to 
be a matter of habit, contracted so imper- 



24 RIDING BEGOLLEGTIONS 

ceptibly that its acquirement can scarcely be 
called a lesson. 

This is why the hunting-field is such a good 
school for leaping. Horses of every kind are 
prompted by some unaccountable impulse to 
follow a pack of hounds, and the beginner 
finds himself voluntarily performing feats of 
activity and daring, in accordance with the 
will of his rider, which no coercion from the 
latter would have induced him to attempt. 
Flushed with success, and if fortunate enough 
to escape a fall, confident in his lately-dis- 
covered powers, he finds a new pleasure in 
their exercise, and, most precious of qualities 
in a hunter, grows " fond of jumping." 

The same result is to be attained at home, 
but is far more gradual, requiring the exercise 
of much care, patience, and perseverance. 

Nevertheless, when we consider the incon- 
venience created by the vagaries of young 
horses in the hunting-field, to hounds, sports- 
men, ladies, pedestrians, and their own riders, 
we must admit that the Irish system is best, 
and that a colt, to use the favourite expression, 
should have been trained into " an accomplished 
lepper," before he is asked to carry a sportsman 
through a run. 

Mr. Earey, no doubt, thoroughly understood 
the nature of the animal with which he had to 
deal. His system was but a convenient applica- 



COEBCION 25 

tion of our principle, viz., Judicious coercion, so 
employed that the brute obeys the man without 
knowing why. When forced to the earth, and 
compelled to remain there, apparently by the 
mere volition of a creabure so much smaller 
and feebler than itself, it seemed to acknow- 
ledge some mysterious and over-mastering 
power such as the disciples of Mesmer profess 
to exercise on their believers, and this, in 
truth, is the whole secret of man's dominion 
over the beasts of the field. It is founded, to 
speak practically, on reason in both, the larger 
share being apportioned to the weaker frame. 
If by terror or resentment, the result of inju- 
dicious severity, that reason becomes obscured 
in the stronger animal, we have a maniac to 
deal with, possessing the strength of ten human 
beings, over whom we have lost our only shadow 
of control ! Where is our supremacy then ? 
It existed but in the imagination of the beast, 
for which, so long as it never tried to break the 
bond, a silken thread was as strong as an iron 
chain. 

Perhaps this is the theory of all government, 
but with the conduct and coercion of mankind 
we have at present nothing to do. 

There is a peculiarity in horses that none who 
spend much time in the saddle can have failed 
to notice. It is the readiness with which 
all accommodate themselves to a rider who 



26 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

succeeds in subjugating one. Some men pos- 
sess a faculty, impossible to explain, of estab- 
lishing a good understanding from the moment 
they place themselves in the saddle. It can 
hardly be called hand, for I have seen con- 
summate horsemen, notably Mr. Lovell, of the 
New Forest, who have lost an arm ; nor seat, 
or how could Colonel Eraser, late of the 11th 
Hussars, be one of the best heavy-w^eights over 
such a country as Meath, with a broken and 
contracted thigh ? Certainly not nerve, for 
there are few J&elds too scanty to furnish 
examples of men who possess every quality 
of horsemanship except daring. What is it 
then ? I cannot tell ; but if you are fortunate 
enough to possess it, whether you weigh ten 
stone or twenty, you will be able to mount your- 
self fifty pounds cheaper than anybody else in 
the market ! Be it an impulse of nature, or a 
result of education, there is a tendency in every 
horse to make vigorous efforts at the shortest 
notice in obedience to the inclination of a 
rider's body or the pressure of his limbs. Such 
indications are of the utmost service in an emer- 
gency, and to offer them at the happy moment 
is a crucial test of horsemanship. Thus races 
are ''snatched out of the fire," as it is termed, 
by riding ; and this is the quality that, where 
judgment, patience, and knowledge of pace are 
equal, renders one jockey superior to the rest. 



COEBGION 27 

It enables a proficient also to clear those large 
fences that, in our grazing districts especially, 
appear impracticable to the uninitiated, as if 
the horse borrowed muscular energy, no less 
than mental courage, from the resolution of 
his rider. On the racecourse and in the hunt- 
ing-:field, Custance, the well-known jockey, pos- 
sesses this quality in the highest degree. The 
same determined strength in the saddle, that 
had done him such good service amongst the 
bullfinches and "oxers" of his native Eutland, 
applied at the happy moment, secured on a 
great occasion his celebrated victory with King 
Lud. 

There are two kinds of hunters that require 
coercion in following hounds, and he is indeed a 
master of his art who feels equally at home on 
each. The one must be steered, the other 
smuggled over a country. As he is never com- 
fortable but in front, we will take the rash horse 
first. 

Let us suppose you have not ridden him before, 
that you like his appearance, his action, all his 
qualities except his boundless ambition, that you 
are in a practicable country, as seems only fair, 
and about to draw a covert affording every pros- 
pect of a run. Before you put your foot in the 
stirrup be sure to examine his bit — not one groom 
in a hundred knows how to bridle a horse pro- 
perly — and remember that on the fitting of this 



28 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

important article depends your success, your 
enjoyment, perhaps your safety, during the day. 
Horses, like servants, will never let their master 
be happy if they are uncomfortable themselves. 
See that your headstall is long enough, so that 
the pressure may lie on the bars of the horse's 
mouth and not crumple up the corners of his lips, 
like a gag. The curb-chain will probably be too 
tight, also the throat-lash ; if so, loosen both, 
and with your own hands ; it is a pleasant way 
of making acquaintance, and may perhaps pre- 
possess him in your favour. If he wears a nose- 
band it will be time enough to take it off when 
you find he shows impatience of the restriction 
by shaking his head, changing his leg frequently, 
or reaching unjustifiably at the rein. 

I am prejudiced against the nose-band. I 
frankly admit a man in a minority of one must 
be wrong, but I never rode a horse in my life 
that, to my own feeling, did not go more com- 
fortably when I took it off. 

Look also to your girths. For a fractious 
temper they are very irritating when drawn too 
tight, while with good shape and a breast plate, 
there is little danger of their not being tight 
enough. When these preliminaries have been 
carefully gone through mount nimbly to the 
saddle, and take the first opportunity of feeling 
your new friend's mouth and paces in trot, 
canter, and gallop. Here, too, though in general 



COERCION 29 

it should be avoided for many reasons, social, 
agricultural, and personal, a little "larking "is 
not wholly inexcusable. It will promote cor- 
diality between man and beast. The latter, as 
we are considering him, is sure to be fond of 
jumping, and to ride him over a fence or two 
away from other horses in cold blood will create 
in his mind the very desirable impression that 
you are of a daring spirit, determined to be in 
front. 

Take him, however, up to his leap as slow as 
he will permit — if possible at a trot. Even 
should he break into a canter and become im- 
petuous at last, there is no space for a violent 
rush in three strides, during which you must 
hold him in a firm, equable grasp. As he leaves 
the ground give him his head, he cannot have 
" too much rope," till he lands again, when, as 
soon as possible, you should pull him back to a 
trot, handling him delicately, soothing him with 
voice and gesture, treating the whole affair as 
the simplest matter of course. Do not bring him 
again over the same place, rather take him on 
for two or three fields in a line parallel to the 
hounds. By the time they are put into covert 
you will have established a mutual understand- 
ing, and found out how much you dislike 
one another at the worst ! It is well now to 
avoid the crowd, but bev/are of taking up a 
position by yourself where you may head the 



30 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

fox ! No man can ride in good-humour under a 
sense of guilt, and you must be good-humoured 
with such a mount as you have under you to- 
day. 

Exhaust, therefore, all your knowledge of 
woodcraft to get away on good terms with the 
hounds. The wildest romps in a rush of horses 
is often perfectly temperate and amenable when 
called on to cut out the work. Should you, by 
ill luck, find yourself behind others in the first 
field, avoid, if possible, following any one of them 
over the first fence. Even though it be some- 
what black and forbidding, choose a fresh place, 
so free a horse as yours will jump the more care- 
fully that his attention is not distracted by a 
leader, and there is the further consideration, 
based on common humanity, that your leader 
might fall when too late for you to stop. No 
man is in so false a position as he who rides over 
a friend in the hunting-field, except the friend ! 

Take your own line. If you be not afraid to 
gallop and the hounds run on, you will probably 
find it plain sailing till they check. Should a 
brook laugh in your face, of no unreasonable 
dimensions, you may charge it with confidence, 
a rash horse usually jumps width, and there will 
be plenty of " room to ride " on the far side. It 
takes but a few feet of water to decimate a field. 
I may here observe that, if, as they cross, you 
see the hounds leap at it, even though they fall 



COERCION 31 

short, you may be sure the distance from bank 
to bank is within the compass of a hunter's 
stride. 

At timber, I would not have you quite so con- 
fident. When, as in Leicestershire, it is set 
fairly in line with the fence and there is a good 
take-oS, your horse, however impetuous, may 
leap it with impunity in his stroke, but should the 
ground be poached by cattle, or dip as you come 
to it, beware of too great hurry. The feat ought 
then to be accomplished calmly and collectedly 
at a trot, the horse taking his time, so to speak, 
from the motions of his rider, and jumping, as it 
is called, '' to his hand." Now when man and 
horse are at variance on so important a matter 
as pace, the one is almost sure to interfere at the 
wrong moment, the other to take off too soon or 
get too close under his leap ; in either case the 
animal is more likely to rise at a fence than a 
rail, and if unsuccessful in clearing it a binder is 
less dangerous to flirt with than a bar. Lord 
Wilton seems to me to ride at timber a turn 
slower than usual, Lord Grey a turn faster. 
Whether father and son differ in theory I am 
unable to say, I can only affirm that both are 
undeniable in practice. Mr. Fellowes of Shottis- 
ham, perhaps the best of his day, and Mr. 
Gilmour, facile princeps, almost walk up to this 
kind of leap ; Colonel, now General Pearson, 
known for so many seasons as " the flying 



32 BIDING BECOLLEGTIONS 

Captain," charges it like a squadron of Sikh 
cavalry ; Captain Arthur Smith pulls back to a 
trot ; Lord Carington scarcely shortens the stride 
of his gallop. Who shall decide between such 
professors ? Much depends on circumstances, 
more perhaps on horses. Assheton Smith used 
to throw the reins on a hunter's neck when rising 
a-t a gate, and say, — " Take care of yourself, you 
brute ! " — whereas the celebrated Lord Jersey, 
who gave me this information of his old friend's 
style, held his own bridle in a vice at such 
emergencies, and both usually got safe over ! 
Perhaps the logical deduction from these con- 
flicting examples should be not to jump timber 
at all. 

But the rash horse is by this time getting 
tired, and now, if you would avoid a casualty, 
you must temper valour with discretion, and 
ride him as skilfully as you can. 

He has probably carried you well and plea- 
santly during the few happy moments that 
intervened between freshness and fatigue ; now 
he is beginning to pull again, but in a more set 
and determined manner than at first. He does 
not collect himself so readily, and wants to go 
faster than ever at his fences, if you would let 
him. This careless, rushing style threatens a 
downfall, and to counteract it will require the 
exercise of your utmost skill. Carry his head 
for him, since he seems to require it, and 



COERCION 33 

endeavour, by main force if necessary, to bring 
him to his leaps with his hind legs under him. 
Half-beaten horses measure distance with great 
accuracy, and "lob" over very large places, 
when properly ridden. If, notwithstanding all 
your precautions, he persists in going on his 
shoulders, blundering through his places, and 
labouring across ridge and furrow like a boat in 
a heavy sea, take advantage of the first lane yoii 
find, and voting the run nearly over, make up 
your mind to view the rest of it in safety from 
the hard road ! 

Eide the same horse again at the first 
opportunity, and, if sound enough to come out 
in his turn, a month's open weather will 
probably make him a very pleasant mount. 

The " slug," a thorough-bred one, we will 
say, with capital hind-ribs, lop ears, and a lazy 
eye, must be managed on a very different system 
from the foregoing. You need not be so par- 
ticular about his bridle, for the coercion in this 
case is of impulsion rather than restraint, but I 
would advise you to select a useful cutting- whip, 
stiff and strong enough to push a gate. Not 
that you must use it freely — one or two " re- 
minders " at the right moment, and an occasional 
flourish, ought to carry you through the day. 
Be sure, too, that you strike underhanded, and 
not in front of your own body, lest you take his 
eye off at the critical moment when your horse 

3 



34 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

is measuring his leap. The best riders prefer 
such an instrument to the spurs, as a stimulant 
to increased pace and momentary exertion. 

You will have little trouble with this kind of 
hunter while hounds are drawing. He will seem 
only too happy to stand still, and you may sit 
amongst your friends in the middle ride, smoking, 
joking, and holding forth to your heart's content. 
But, like the fox, you will find your troubles 
begin with the cheering holloa of "Gone away ! " 

On your present mount, instead of avoiding 
the crowd, I should advise you to keep in the 
very midst of the torrent that, pent up in covert, 
rushes down the main ride to choke a narrow 
handgate and overflow the adjoining field. 
Emerging from the jaws of their inconvenient 
egress, they will scatter, like a row of beads 
when the string breaks, and while the majority 
incline to right or left, regardless of the line of 
chase as compared with that of safety, some 
half-dozen are sure to single themselves out, 
and ride straight after the hounds. 

Select one of these, a determined horseman, 
whom you know to be mounted on an experienced 
hunter ; give him i^lenty of room — fifty yards at 
least — and ride his line, nothing doubting, fence 
for fence, till your horse's blood is up, and your 
own too. I cannot enough insist on a jealous 
care of your leader's safety, and a little con- 
sideration for his prejudices. The boldest sports- 



COEBGION 35 

men are exceedingly touchy about being ridden 
over, and not without reason. There is some- 
thing unpleasantly suggestive in the bit, and 
teeth, and tongue of an open mouth at your 
ear; while your own horse, quivering high in 
air, makes the discovery that he has not allowed 
margin enough for the yawner under his nose ! 
It is little less inexcusable to pick a man's 
pocket than to ride in it ; and no apology can 
exonerate so flagrant an assault as to land on 
him when down. Eeflect, also, that a hunter, 
after the effort to clear his fence, often loses 
foothold, particularly over ridge and furrow, in 
the second or third stride, and falls at the very 
moment a follower would suppose he was safe 
over. Therefore, do not begin for yourself till 
your leader is twenty yards into the next field, 
when you may harden your heart, set your 
muscles, and give your horse to understand, by 
seat and manner, that it must be in, through, 
or over. 

Beware, however, of hurrying him off his legs. 
Eide him resolutely, indeed, but in a short, 
contracted stride ; slower in proportion to the 
unwillingness he betrays, so as to hold him in 
a vice, and squeeze him up to the brink of his 
task, when, forbidden to turn from it, he will 
probably make his effort in self-defence, and 
take you somehow to the other side. Not one 
hunter in a hundred can jump in good form 



36 BIDING BECOLLEGTIONS 

when going at speed; it is the perfection of 
equine prowess, resulting from great quickness 
and the confidence of much experience. An 
arrant refuser usually puts on the steam of his 
own accord, like a confirmed rusher, and wheels 
to right or left at the last moment, with an 
activity that, displayed in a better cause, would 
be beyond praise. The rider, too, has more 
command of his horse, when forced up to the 
bit in a slow canter than at any other pace. 

Thoroughbred horses, until their education is 
complete, are apt to get very close to their 
fences, preferring, as it would seem, to go into 
them oa this side rather than the other. It is 
not a style that inspires confidence ; yet these 
crafty, careful creatures are safer than they 
seem, and from jumping in a collected form, 
with their hind legs under them, extricate them- 
selves with surprising address from difiiculties 
that, after a little more tuition, they will never 
be in. They are really less afraid of their fences, 
and consequently less flurried, than the wilful, 
impetuous brute that loses its equanimity from 
the moment it catches sight of an obstacle and 
miscalculating its distance, in sheer nervousness 
— most fatal error of all — takes off too soon. 

I will now suppose that in the wake of your 
pilot you have negotiated two or three fences 
with some expenditure of nerve and temper, but 
without a refusal or a fall. The cutting-whip 



COEBCION 37 

has been applied, and the result, perhaps, was 
disappointing, for it is an uncertain remedy, 
though, in my opinion, preferable to the spur. 
Your horse has shown great leaping powers in 
the distances he has covered without the mo- 
mentum of speed, and has doubled an on-and-off 
with a precision not excelled by your leader 
himself. If he would but jump in his stride, 
you feel you have a hunter under you. Should 
the country be favourable, now is the time to 
teach him this accomplishment, while his limbs 
are supple and his spirit roused. If he seems 
willing to face them, let him take his fences in 
his own way ; do not force or hurry him, but 
keep fast hold of his head without varying the 
pressure of hand or limb by a hairsbreadth ; the 
least uncertainty of finger or inequality of seat 
will spoil it all. Should the ditch be towards 
him, he will jump from a stand, or nearly so, 
but, to your surprise, will land safe in the next 
field. If it is on the far side, he will show more 
confidence, and will perhaps swing over the 
whole with something of an effort in his canter. 
A foot or two of extra width may cause him to 
drop a hind leg, or even bring him on his nose ; 
so much the better ! no admonition of yours 
would have proved as effectual a warning ; he 
will take good care to cover distance enough 
next time. Dispense with your leader now, if 
you are pretty close to the hounds, for your 



38 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

horse is gcathering confidence with every stride. 
He can gallop, of course, and is good through 
dirt ; it is also understood that he is fit to go ; 
there are not many in a season, but let us sup- 
pose you have dropped into a run ; if he carries 
you well to the finish, he will be a hunter from 
to-day. 

After some five-and-twenty minutes, you will 
find him going with more dash and freedom, as 
his neighbours begin to tire. You may now ride 
him at timber without scruple, when not too 
high, but avoid a rail that looks as if it would 
break. To find out he may tamper with such 
an obstacle is the most dangerous discovery a 
hunter can make. You should send him at it 
pretty quick, lest he get too near to rise, and 
refuse at the last moment. He may not do it 
in the best of form, but whether he chances it in 
his gallop, or bucks over like a deer, or hoists 
himself sideways all in a heap, with his tail 
against your hat, at this kind of fence this kind 
of horse is most unlikely to fall. 

The same may be said of a brook. If he is 
within a fair distance of the hounds, and you 
see by the expression of his ears and crest that 
he is watching them with ardent interest, ride 
him boldly at water should it be necessary. It 
is quite possible he may jump it in his stride 
from bank to bank, without a moment's hesita- 
tion. It is equally possible he may stop short 



COERCION 39 

on the bank, with lowered head and crouching 
quarters as if prepared to drink, or dive, or 
decHne. He will do none of these. Sit still, 
give him his head, keep close into your saddle, 
not moving so much as an eyelash, and it is 
more than probable that he will jump the stream 
standing, and reach the other side, with a 
scramble and a flounder at the worst ! 

If he should drop his hind-legs, slioot yourself 
of! over his shoulders in an instant, with a fast 
hold of the bridle, at which tug hard, even 
though you may not have regained your legs. 
A very slight help now will enable him to ex- 
tricate himself, but if he is allowed to subside 
into the gulf, it may take a team of cart horses 
to drag him out. 

When in the saddle again give him a timely 
pull ; after the struggle you will be delighted 
with each other, and have every prospect of 
going on triumphantly to the end. 

I have here endeavoured to describe the 
different methods of coercion by which two op- 
posite natures may be induced to exert them- 
selves on our behalf in the chase. Every horse 
inclines, more or less, to one or other extreme I 
have cited as an example. A perfect hunter has 
preserved the good qualities of each without the 
faults, but how many perfect hunters do any of 
us ride in our lives ? The chestnut is as fast as 
the wind, stout and honest, a safe and gallant 



40 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

fencer, but too light a mouth makes him difficult 
to handle at blind and cramped places ; the bay 
can leap like a deer, and climb like a goat, in- 
vincible at doubles, and unrivalled at rails, but, 
as bold Lord Cardigan said of an equall}'' accom- 
plished animal, ''it takes him a long time to 
get from one bit of timber to another ! " While 
the brown, even faster than the chestnut, even 
safer than the bay, would be the best, as he 
is the pleasantest hunter in the world — only 
nothing will induce him to go near a brook ! 

It is only by exertion of a skill that is the 
embodiment of thought in action, by application 
of a science founded on reason, experience and 
analogy, that we can approach perfection in our 
noble four-footed friend. Common sense will 
do much, kindness more, coercion very little, 
yet we are not to forget that man is the master ; 
that the hand, however light, must be strong, 
the heel, however lively, must be resolute ; and 
that when persuasion, best of all inducements, 
seems to fail, we must not shrink from the 
timely application of force. 



CHAPTEK III 

THE USE OF THE BRIDLE 

The late Mr. Maxse, celebrated some fifty years 
ago for a fineness of hand that enabled him to 
cross Leicestershire with fewer falls than any 
other sportsman of fifteen stone who rode equally 
straight, used to profess much comical impatience 
with the insensibility of his servants to this 
useful quality. He was once seen explaining 
what he meant to his coachman with a silk- 
handkerchief passed round a post. 

" Pull at it ! " said the master. "Does it pull 
at you ? " 

" Yes, sir," answered the servant grinning. 

" Slack it off then. Does it pull at you now? " 

"No, sir." 

"Well then, you double-distilled fool, can't 
you see that your horses are like that post ? If 
you don't pull at them they wont pull at you ! " 

Now it seems to me that in riding and driving 
also what we want to teach our horses is, that 

41 



42 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

when we pull at them they are not to pull at us, 
and this understanding is only to be attained by 
a delicacy of touch, a harmony of intention, and 
a give-and-take concord, that for lack of a better 
we express by the term " hand." Like the 
fingering of a pianoforte, this desirable quality 
seems rather a gift than an acquirement, and its 
rarity has no doubt given rise to the multiplicity 
of inventions with which man's ingenuity en- 
deavours to supply the want of manual skill. 

It was the theory of a celebrated Yorkshire 
sportsman, the well-known Mr. Fairfax, that 
''every horse is a hunter if you don't throw 
him down with the bridle ! " and I have always 
understood his style of riding was in perfect 
accordance with this daring profession of faith. 
The instrument, however, though no doubt pro- 
ducing ten falls, where it prevents one, is in so 
far a necessary evil, that we are helpless without 
it, and when skilfully used in conjunction with 
legs, knees, and body by a consummate horseman, 
would seem to convey the man's intentions to 
the beast through some subtle agency, mysterious 
and almost rapid as thought. It is impossible to 
define the nature of that sympathy which exists 
between a well-bitted horse and his rider, they 
seem actuated by a common impulse, and it is 
to promote or create this mutual understanding 
that so many remarkable conceits, generally 
painful, have been dignified with the name of 



THE USE OF THE BRIDLE 43 

bridles. In the saddle-room of any hunting-man 
may be found at least a dozen of these, but you 
will probably learn on inquiry, that three or four 
at most are all he keeps in use. It must be a 
stud of strangely-varying mouths and tempers 
which, the snaffle, gag, Pelham, and double- 
bridle are insufficient to humour and control. 

As it seems from the oldest representations 
known of men on horseback, to have been the 
earliest in use, we will take the snaffle first. 

This bit, the invention of common sense going 
straight to its object, while lying easily on the 
tongue and bars of a horse's mouth, and affording 
control without pain, is perfection of its kind. 
It causes no annoyance and consequently no 
alarm to the unbroken colt, champing and 
churning freely at the new plaything between 
his jaws ; on it the highly trained charger bears 
pleasantly and lightly, to "change his leg," — 
"passage" — or "shoulder in," at the slightest 
inflection of a rider's hand ; the hunter leans 
against it for support in deep ground ; and the 
race-horse allows it to hold him together at 
nearly full-speed without contracting his stride, 
or by fighting with the restriction wasting any 
of his gallop in the air. It answers its purpose 
admirably so long as it remains in the proper 
place, but not a moment longer. Directly a 
horse by sticking out his nose can shift this 
pressure to his lips and teeth, it affords no more 



44 BIDING BEGOLLECTIONS 

control than a halter. With head up, and mouth 
open, he can go how and where he will. In such 
a predicament only an experienced horseman has 
the skill to give him such an amount of liberty 
without license as cajoles him into dropping 
again to his bridle, before he breaks away. 
Once off at speed, with the conviction that he 
is master, however ludicrous in appearance, the 
affair is serious enough in fact. 

Many centuries elapsed, and a good deal of 
unpleasant riding must have been endured, 
before the snaffle was supplemented with a 
martingale. Judging from the Elgin Marbles, 
this useful invention seems to have been wholly 
unknown to the Greeks. Though the men's 
figures are perfect in seat and attitude through 
the whole of that spirited frieze which adorned 
the Parthenon, not one of their horses carries 
its head in the right place. The ancient Greek 
seems to have relied on strength rather than 
cunning, in his dealings with the noble animal, 
and though he sat down on it like a workman, 
must have found considerable difficulty in 
guiding his beast the way he wanted to go. 

But with a martingale, the most insubordinate 
soon discover that they cannot rid themselves of 
control. It keeps their heads down in a position 
that enables the bit to act on the mouth, and if 
they must needs pull obliges them to pull against 
that most sensitive part called the bars. There 



THE USE OF THE BBIDLE 45 

is no escape — bend their necks they must, 
and to bend their necks means to acknow- 
ledge a master and do homage to the rider's 
will. 

It is a well-known fact, and I can attest it by 
my own experience, that a twisted snaffle with a 
martingale will hold a runaway when every other 
bridle fails ; but to guide or stop an animal 
by the exercise of bodily strength is not 
horsemanship, and to saw at its mouth for the 
purpose cannot be expected to promote that 
sympathy of desire and intention which we 
understand by the term. 

If we look at the sporting prints of our grand- 
fathers and great-grandfathers, as delineated, 
early in the present century, we observe that 
nine out of every ten hunters were ridden in 
plain snaffle bridles, and we ask ourselves if our 
progenitors bred more docile beasts, or were 
these drinkers of port wine, bolder, stronger, and 
better horsemen than their descendants. With- 
out entering on the vexed question of compara- 
tive merit in hounds, hunters, pace, country and 
sport, at an interval of more than two generations, 
I think I can find a reason, and it seems to me 
simply this. 

Most of these hunting pictures are represen- 
tations of the chase in our midland counties, 
notably Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, 
then only partially inclosed ; boundary fences 



46 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

of large properties were few and far between, 
straggling also, and ill-made up, the high thorn 
hedges that now call forth so much bold and so 
much timid riding, either did not exist, or were 
of such tender growth as required protection by 
a low rail on each side, and a sportsman, with 
Hying coat-tails, doubling these obstacles neatly, 
at his own pace, forms a favourite subject for the 
artist of the time. Twenty or thirty horsemen, 
at most, comprised the field ; in such an expanse 
of free country there must have been plenty of 
room to ride, and we all know how soon a horse 
becomes amenable to control on a moor or an 
open down. The surface too was undrained, and 
a few furlongs bring the hardest puller to reason 
when he goes in over his fetlocks every stride. 
Hand and heel are the two great auxiliaries of 
the equestrian, but our grandfathers, I imagine, 
made less use of the bridle than the spur. 

With increased facilities for locomotion, in the 
improvement of roads and coaches, hunting, 
always the English gentleman's favourite 
pastime, became a fashion for every one who 
could afford to keep a horse, and men thought 
little of twelve hours spent in the mail on a dark 
winter's night in order to meet hounds next day. 
The luimbors attending a favourite fixture began 
to nniltiply, second horses were introduced, so 
that long before the use of railways scarlet coats 
mustered by tens as to-day by fifties, and the 



THE USE OF THE BBIDLE 47 

croivd, as it is called, became a recognised 
impediment to the enjoyments of the day. 

Meantime fences were growing in height and 
thickness ; an improved system of farming sub- 
divided the fields and partitioned them off for 
pastoral or agricultural purposes ; the hunter 
was called upon to collect himself, and jump at 
short notice, with a frequency that roused his 
mettle to the utmost, and this too in a rush of 
his fellow-creatures, urging, jostling, crossing 
him in the first five minutes at every turn. 

Under such conditions it became indispen- 
sable to have him in perfect control, and that 
excellent invention, the double-bridle, came into 
general use. 

I suppose I need hardly explain to my reader 
that it loses none of the advantages belonging to 
the snaffie, while it gains in the powerful leverage 
of the curb, a restraint few horses are resolute 
enough to defy. In skilful hands, varying, yet 
harmonising, the manipulation of both, as a 
musician plays treble and bass on the pianoforte, 
it would seem to connect the rider's thought with 
the horse's movement, as if an electric chain 
passed through wrist, and finger, and mouth, 
from the head of the one to the heart of the 
other. The bearing and touch of this instrument 
can be so varied as to admit of a continual 
change in the degree of liberty and control, of 
that give-and-take which is the whole secret of 



48 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

comfortable progression. While the bridoon or 
snaffle-rein is tightened, the horse may stretch 
his neck to the utmost, without losing that con- 
fidence in the moral support of his rider's hand 
which is so encouraging to him if unaccompanied 
by pain. When the curb is brought into play, he 
bends his nock at its pressure to a position that 
brings his hind-legs under his own body and his 
rider's weight, from which collected form alone 
can his greatest efforts be made. Have your 
curb-bit sufficiently powerful, if not high in the 
2)07't, at any rate long in the cheek, your bridoon 
as thick as your saddler can be induced to send 
it. With the first you bring a horse's head into 
the right place, with the second, if smooth and 
very thick, you keep it there, in perfect comfort 
to the animal, and consequently to yourself. A 
thin bridoon, and I have seen them mere wires, 
only cuts, chafes, and irritates, causing more 
pain and consequently more resistance, than the 
curb itself. I have already mentioned the fine- 
ness of Mr. Lovell's hand (alas ! that he has but 
one), and I was induced by this gentleman to try 
a plan of his own invention, which, with his 
delicate manipulation, he found to be a success. 
Instead of the usual bridoon, he rode with a 
double strap of leather, exactly the width of a 
bridle-rein, and twice its thickness, resting 
where the snaffle ordinarily lies, on the horse's 
tongue and bars. With his touch it answered 



THE USE OF THE BRIDLE 49 

admirably, with mine, perhaps because I used 
the leather more roughly than the metal, it 
seemed the severer of the two. But a badly- 
broken horse, and half the hunters we ride have 
scarcely been taught their alphabet, will perhaps 
try to avoid the restraint of a curb by throwing 
his head up at the critical moment when you 
want to steady him for a difficulty. If you have 
a firm seat, perfectly independent of the bridle, 
— and do not be too sure of this, until you have 
tried the experiment of sitting a leap with 
nothing to hold on by — you may call in the 
assistance of the running-martingale, slipping 
your curb-rein, which should be made to un- 
buckle, through its rings. Your curb, I repeat^, 
contrary to the usual practice, and 7iot your 
snaffle. I will soon explain why. 

The horse has so docile a nature, that he would 
always rather do right than wrong, if he can only 
be taught to distinguish one from the other ; 
therefore, have all your restrictive power on the 
same engine. Directly he gives to your hand, 
by affording him more liberty you show him that 
he has met your wishes, and done what you 
asked. If you put the martingale on your 
bridoon rein you can no longer indicate approval. 
To avoid its control he must lean on the discom- 
fort of his curb, and it puzzles no less than it 
discourages him, to find that every effort to 
please you is met, one way or the other, by 

4: 



50 BIDING BECOLLECTtONS 

restraint. So much for his convenience ; now 
for your own. I will suppose you are using the 
common hunting martingale, attached to the 
breast-plate of your saddle, not to its girths. Be 
careful that the rings are too small to slip over 
those of the curb-bit ; you will be in an awkward 
predicament if, after rising at a fence, your horse 
in the moment that he tries to extend himself 
finds his nose tied down to his knees. 

Neither must you shorten it too much at first; 
rather accustom your pupil gradually to its re- 
straint, and remember that all horses are not 
shaped alike ; some are so formed that they must 
needs carry their heads higher and, as you choose 
to think, in a worse place than others. Tuition 
in all its branches cannot be too gradual, and 
nature, whether of man or beast, is less easily 
driven than led. The first consideration in riding 
is, no doubt, to make our horses do what we 
desire; but when this elementary object has been 
gained, it is of great importance to our comfort 
that they should accept our wishes as their own, 
persuaded that they exert themselves voluntarily 
in the service of their riders. For this it is 
essential to use such a bridle as they do not 
fear to meet, yet feel unwilling to disobey. Many 
high-couraged horses, with sensitive mouths, no 
uncommon combination, and often united to 
those propelling powers in hocks and quarters 
that are so valuable to a hunter, while they scorn 



THE USE OF THE BBIDLE 51 

restraint by the mild influence of the snaffle, 
fight tumultuously against the galHng restriction 
of a curb. For these the scion of a noble family, 
that has produced many fine riders, invented a 
bridle, combining, as its enemies declare, the 
defects of both, to which he has given his name. 

In England there seems a very general preju- 
dice against the Pelham, whereas in Ireland we 
see it in constant use. Like other bridles of a 
peculiar nature it is adapted for peculiar horses ; 
and I have myself had three or four excellent 
hunters that would not be persuaded to go com- 
fortably in anything else. 

I need hardly explain the construction of a 
Pelham. It consists of a single bit, smooth and 
jointed, like a common snaffle, but prolonged 
from the rings on either side to a cheek, having 
a second rein attached, which acts, by means of 
a curb-chain round the lower jaw, in the same 
manner, though to a modified extent, as the 
curb-rein of the usual hunting double-bridle, to 
which it bears an outward resemblance, and of 
which it seems a mild and feeble imitation. I 
have never to this day made out whether or not 
a keen young sportsman was aruusing himself at 
my expense, when, looking at my horse's head 
thus equipped, he asked the simple question : 
" Do you find it a good plan to have your snaffle 
and curb all in one ? " I did find it a good plan 
with that particular horse, and at the risk of 



52 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

appearing egotistical I will explain why, by 
narrating the circumstances under which I first 
discovered his merits illustrating as they do the 
special advantages of this unpopular implement. 
The animal in question, thoroughbred, and 
amongst hunters exceedingly speedy, was unused 
to jumping when I purchased him, and from his 
unaffected delight in their society, I imagine had 
never seen hounds. He was active, however, 
high-couraged, and only too willing to be in front ; 
but with a nervous, excitable temperament, and 
every inclination to pull hard, he had also a 
highly sensitive mouth. The double-bridle in 
which he began his experiences annoyed him 
sadly ; he bounced, fretted, made himself 
thoroughly disagreeable, and our first day was 
a pleasure to neither of us. Next time I be- 
thought me of putting on a Pclham, and the 
effect of its greater liberty seemed so satisfactory 
that to enhance it, I took the curb-chain off 
altogether. I Vv'as in the act of pocketing the 
links, when a straight-necked fox broke covert, 
pointing for a beautiful grass country, and the 
hounds came pouring out with a burning scent, 
not five hundred yards from his brush. I re- 
mounted pretty quick, but my thoroughbred one 
— in racing language " a good beginner " — was 
quicker yet, and my feet were hardly in the 
stirrups, ere he had settled to his stride, and 
was flying along in rather too close proximity to 



THE USE OF THE BBIDLE 53 

the pack. Happily, there was plenty of room, 
and the hounds ran unusually hard, for my horse 
fairly broke away with me in the first field, and 
although he allowed me by main force to steady 
him a little at his fences, during ten minutes at 
least I know who was not master ! He calmed, 
however, before the end of the burst, which was 
a very brilliant gallop, over a practicable country, 
and when I sent him home at two o'clock, I felt 
satisfied I had a game, good horse, that would 
soon make a capital hunter. 

Now I am persuaded our timely escapade was 
of the utmost service. It gave him confidence 
in his rider's hand; which, with this light Pelham 
bridle he found could inflict on him no pain, and 
only directed him the way he delighted to go. 
On his next appearance in the hunting-field, he 
was not afraid to submit to a little more restraint, 
and so by degrees, though I am bound to admit, 
the process took more than one season, he be- 
came a steady, temperate conveyance, answering 
the powerful conventional double-bridle with no 
less docility than the most sedate of his stable 
companions. We have seen a great deal of fun 
together since, but never such a game of romps 
as our first ! 

Why are so many brilliant horses difficult to 
ride? It ought not to be so. The truest shape 
entails the truest balance, consequently the 
smoothest paces and the best mouth. The 



54 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

fault is neither of form nor temper, but 
originates, if truth must be told, in the preju- 
dices of the breaker, who will not vary his system 
to meet the requirements of different pupils. 
The best hunters have necessarily great power 
behind the saddle, causing them to move with 
their hind-legs so well under them, that they 
will not, and indeed cannot lean on the rider's 
hand. This the breaker calls "facing their bit," 
and the shyer they seem of that instrument, 
the harder he pulls. Up go their heads to avoid 
the pain, till that effort of self-defence becomes 
a habit, and it takes weeks of patience and fine 
horsemanship to undo the effects of unnecessary 
ill-usage for an hour. 

Eastern horses, being broke from the first in 
the severest possible bits, all acquire this trick of 
throwing their noses in the air ; but as they have 
never learned to pull, for the Oriental prides 
himself on riding with a finger, you need only 
give them an easy bridle and a martingale to 
make them go quietly and pleasantly, with heads 
in the right place, delighted to find control not 
necessarily accompanied by pain. 

And this indeed is the whole object of our 
numerous inventions. A light-mouthed horse 
steered by a good rider, will cross a country 
safely and satisfactorily in a Pelham bridle, with 
a running martingale on the lower rein. It is 
only necessary to give him his head at his fences, 



THE USE OF THE BBIDLE 55 

that is to say, to let his mouth alone, the moment 
he leaves the gromid. That the man he carries 
can hold a horse up, while landing, I believe to 
be a fallacy, that he gives him every chance in a 
difficulty by sitting well back and not interfering 
with his efforts to recover himself, I know to be 
a fact. The rider cannot keep too quiet till the 
last moment, when his own knee touches the 
ground, then, the sooner he parts company the 
better, turning his face towards his horse if 
possible, so as not to lose sight of the falling 
mass, and, above all, holding the bridle in his 
hand. 

The last precaution cannot be insisted on too 
strongly. Not to mention the solecism of being 
afoot in boots and breeches during a run, and the 
cruel tax we inflict on some brother sportsman, 
who, being too good a fellow to leave us in the 
lurch, rides his own horse furlongs out of his line 
to go and catch ours, there is the further con- 
sideration of personal safety to life and limb. 
That is a very false position in which a man 
finds himself, when the animal is on its legs 
again, who cannot clear his foot from the stirrup, 
and has let his horse's head go ! 

I believe too that a tenacious grasp on the reins 
saves many a broken collar-bone, as it cants the 
rider's body round in the act of falling, so that 
the cushion of muscle behind it, rather than the 
point of his shoulder, is the first place to touch 



56 RIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

the ground, and no one who has ever been 
" pitched into " by a bigger boy at school can 
have forgotten that this part of the body takes 
punishment with the greatest impunity. But 
we are wandering from our subject. To hold on 
like grim death when down, seems an accomplish- 
ment little akin to the contents of a chapter pro- 
fessing to deal with the skilful use of the bridle. 

The horse, except in peculiar cases, such as a 
stab with a sharp instrument, shrinks like other 
animals from pain. If he cannot avoid it in one 
way he will in another. When suffering under 
the pressure of his bit, he endeavours to escape 
the annoyance, according to the shape and setting- 
on of his neck and shoulders, either by throwing 
his head up to the level of a rider's eyes, or dash- 
ing it down between his own knees. The latter 
is by far the most pernicious manoeuvre of the 
two, and to counteract it has been constructed 
the instrument we call " a gag." 

This is neither more nor less than another 
snaffle bit of which the head-stall and rein, instead 
of being separately attached to the rings, are in 
one piece running through a swivel, so that a 
leverage is obtained on the side of the mouth of 
such power as forces the horse's head upwards to 
its proper level. In a gag and snaffle no horse 
can continue "boring," as it is termed, against 
his rider's hand ; in a gag and curb he is indeed 
a hard puller who will attempt to run away. 



THE USE OF THE BBIDLE 57 

But with this bridle, adieu to all those 
delicacies of fingering which form the great 
charm of horsemanship, and are indeed the 
master touches of the art. A gag cannot be 
drawn gently through the mouth with hands 
parted and lowered on each side so as to "turn 
and wind a fiery Pegasus," nor is the bull-headed 
beast that requires it one on which, without long 
and patient tuition, you may hope to "witch 
the world with noble horsemanship." It is at 
best but a schoolmaster, and like the curbless 
Pelham in which my horse ran away with me, 
only a step in the right direction towards such 
willing obedience as we require. Something has 
been gained when our horse learns we have power 
to control him ; much when he finds that power 
exerted for his own advantage. I would ride 
mine in a chain-cable if by no other means I could 
make him understand that he must submit to my 
will, hoping always eventually to substitute for 
it a silken thread. 

All bridles, by whatever names they may be 
called, are but the contrivances of a government 
that depends for authority on concealment of its 
weakness. Hard hands will inevitably make 
hard pullers, but to the animal intellect a force 
still untested is a force not likely to be defied. 
The loose rein argues confidence, and even the 
brute understands that confidence is an attribute 
of power. 



58 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

Change your bridle over and over again, until 
you find one that suits your hand, rather, I 
should say, that suits your horse's mouth. Do 
not, however, be too well satisfied with a first 
essay. He may go delightfully to-day in a bit 
that he will learn how to counteract by to-morrow. 
Nevertheless, a long step has been made in the 
right direction when he has carried you pleasantly 
if only for an hour. Should that period have 
been passed in following hounds, it is worth a 
whole week's education under less exciting con- 
ditions. A horse becomes best acquainted with 
his rider in those situations that call forth most 
care and circumspection from both. 

Broken ground, fords, morasses, dark nights, 
all tend to mutual good understanding, but forty 
minutes over an inclosed country establishes the 
partnership of man and beast on such relations 
of confidence as much subsequent indiscretion 
fails to efface. The same excitement that rouses 
his courage seems to sharpen his faculties and 
clear his brain. It is wonderful hov/ soon he 
begins to understand your meaning as conveyed 
literally from " hand to mouth," how cautiously 
he picks his steps amongst stubs or rabbit-holes, 
when the loosened rein warns him he must look 
out for himself, how boldly he quickens his stride 
and collects his energies for the fence he is 
approaching, when he feels grip and grasp tighten 
on back and bridle, conscious that you mean to 



THE USE OF THE BBIDLE 59 

*' catch hold of his head and send him at it ; " 
while loving you all the better for this energy of 
yours that stimulates his own. 

And now we come to a question admitting of no 
little discussion, inasmuch as those practitioners 
differ widely who are best capable of forming 
an opinion. The advocates of the loose rein, who 
though outnumbered at the covert-side, are not 
always in a minority when the hounds run, main- 
tain that a hunter never acquits himself so well 
as while yet completely alone ; their adversaries, 
on the other hand, protest that the first principle 
of equitation, is to keep fast hold of your horse's 
head at all times and under all circumstances. 

" You pull him into his fences," argues Finger. 

" You will never pull him out of them," answers 
Fist. 

" Get into a bucket and try to lift yourself by 
the handles!" rejoins Finger, quoting from an 
apposite illustration of Colonel Greenwood's, as 
accomplished a horseman as his brother, also a 
colonel, whose fine handling I have already men- 
tioned. "A horse isn't a bucket," returns Fist, 
triumphantly; "why, directly you let his head 
go does he stop in a race, refuse a brook, or 
stumble when tired on the road?" 

It is a thousand pities that he cannot tell us 
which of the two systems he prefers himself. We 
may argue from theory, but can only judge by 
practice ; and must draw our inferences rather 



GO BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

from personal experience than the subtlest 
reasoning of the schools. 

Now if all horses were broke by such masters 
of the art as General Lawrenson and Mr. 
Mackenzie Greaves, riders who combine the 
strength and freedom of the hunting-field with 
the scientific exercise of hands and limbs, as 
taught in the haute ecole, so obedient would they 
become to our gestures, nay, to the inflection of 
our bodies, that they might be trusted over the 
strongest lordship in Leicestershire with their 
heads quite loose, or, for that matter, Avith no 
bridle at all. But equine education is usually 
conducted on a very different system to that of 
Monsieur Baucher, or either of the above-named 
gentlemen. From colthood horses have been 
taught to understand, paradoxically enough, that 
a dead pull against the jaws means, " Go on, and 
be hanged to you, till I alter the pressure as a 
hint for you to stop." 

It certainly seems common sense, that when we 
tug at a horse's bridle he should oblige us by 
coming to a halt, yet in his fast paces, we find 
the pull produces a precisely contrary effect ; and 
for this habit, which during the process of break- 
ing has become a second nature, we must make 
strong allowances, particularly in the hurry and 
excitement of crossing a country after a pack of 
hounds. 

It has happened to most of us, no doubt, at 



THE USE OF TEE BBIDLE 61 

some period to have owned a favourite, wnose 
mouth was so fine, temper so perfect, courage so 
rehable, and who had so learned to accommodate 
pace and action to our lightest indications, that 
when thus mounted we felt we could go tit-tup- 
ping over a country with slackened rein and toe 
in stirrup, as if cantering in the Park. As we 
near our fence, a little more forbidding, 
perhaps, than common, every stride seems timed 
like clockwork, and, unwilling to interfere 
with such perfect mechanism, we drop our hand, 
trusting wholly in the honour of our horse. At 
the very last stride the traitor refuses, and whisks 
round. " Et tit brute .-^ " we exclaim — " Are you 
also a brute? " — and catching him vigorously by 
the head, we ram him again at the obstacle to 
fly over it like a bird. Early associations had 
prevailed, and oar staunch friend disappointed us, 
not from cowardice, temper, or incapacity, but 
only from the influence of an education based on 
principles contrary to common sense. 

The great art of horsemanship, then, is to find 
out what the animal requires of us, and to meet 
its wishes, even its prejudices, half-way. Cool 
with the rash, and daring with the cautious, it is 
wise to retain the semblance, at least, of a self- 
possession superior to casualties, and equal to any 
emergency, from a refusal to a fall. Though 
"give and take" is the very first principle of 
handling, too sudden a variation of pressure has 



62 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

a tendency to confuse and flurry a hunter, 
whether in the gallop or when collecting itself 
for the leap. If you have been holding a horse 
hard by the head, to let him go in the last stride 
is very apt to make him run into his fence ; while, 
if you have been riding with a light hand and 
loosened rein, a " chuck under the chin " at an 
inopportune moment distracts his attention, and 
causes him to drop short. " How did you get 
your fall ? " is a common question in the hunting- 
field. If the partner at one end of the bridle 
could speak, how often would he answer, 
" Through bad riding ; " when the partner at the 
other dishonestly replies, " The brute didn't 
jump high enough, or far enough, that was all." 
It is well for the most brilliant reputations that 
the noble animal is generous as he is brave, and 
silent as he is wise. 

I have already observed there are many more 
kinds of bridles than those just mentioned. 
Major Dwyer's notably, of which the principle is 
an exact fitting of bridoon and curb-bits to the 
horse's mouth, seems to give general satisfaction! 
and Lord Gardner, whose opinion none are 
likely to dispute, stamps it with his approval. I 
confess, however, to a preference for the old- 
fashioned double - bridles, such as are called 
respectively the Dunchurch, Nos. 1 and 2, being 
persuaded that these will meet the requirements 
of nine horses out of ten that have any business 



THE USE OF THE BBIDLE 63 

in the hunting-field. The first, very large, 
powerful, and of stronger leverage than the 
second, should be used with discretion, but, in 
good hands, is an instrument against which the 
most resolute puller, if he insists on fighting 
with it, must contend in vain. Thus tackled, 
and ridden by such a horseman as Mr. Angerstein, 
for instance, of Weeting, in Norfolk, I do not 
believe there are half-a-dozen hunters in England 
that could get the mastery. Whilst living in 
Northamptonshire I remember he owned a 
determined runaway, not inappropriately called 
"Hard Bargain," that in this bridle he could 
turn and twist like a pony. I have no doubt he 
has not forgotten the horse, nor a capital run 
from Misterton, in which, with his usual kindness, 
he lent him thus bridled to a friend. 

I have seen horses go very pleasantly in what 
I believe is called the half -moon bit, of which the 
bridoon, having no joint, is shaped so as to take 
the curve of the animal's mouth. I have never 
tried one, but the idea seems good, as based on 
the principle of comfort to the horse. When we 
can arrive at that essential, combined with power 
to the rider, we may congratulate ourselves on 
possessing the right bridle at last, and need have 
no scruple in putting the animal to its best pace, 
confident we can stop it at will. 

We should never forget that the faster hounds 
run, the more desirable is it to have perfect 



64 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

control of our conveyance ; and that a hunter of 
very moderate speed, easy to turn, and quick on 
its legs, will cross a country with more expedition 
than a race-horse that requires half a field to 
" go about; " and that we dare not extend lest, 
"with too much way on," he should get com- 
pletely out of our hand. Once past the gap you 
fancied, you will never find a place in the fence 
you like so well again. 



CIIAPTEE lY 

THE ABUSE OF THE SPUR 

" You may ride us, 
With one soft kiss, a thousand furlongs, ere 
With spurs we heat an acre," 

Says Hermione, and indeed that gentle lady's 
illustration equally applies to an inferior order 
of beings, from which also man derives much 
comfort and delight. It will admit of discussion 
whether the "armed heel," with all its terrors, 
has not, on the race-course at least, lost more 
triumphs than it has won. 

I have been told that Fordham, who seems 
to be first past the judges' chair oftener than 
any jockey of the day, wholly repudiates "the 
tormentors," arguing that they only make a horse 
shorten his stride, and "shut up," to use an 
expressive term, instead of struggling gallantly 
home. Judging by analogy, it is easy to 
conceive that such may be the case. The 

5 65 



G6 RIDTNG BECOLLECTIONS 

tendency of the human frame seems certainly 
to contract rather than expand its muscles, with 
instinctive repugnance at the stab of a sharp 
instrument, or even the puncture of a thorn. 
It is not while receiving punishment but ad- 
ministering it that the prize-fighter opens his 
shoulders and lets out. There is no doubt that 
many horses, thoroughbred ones especially, will 
stop suddenly, even in their gallop, and resent 
by kicking an indiscreet application of the spurs. 
A determined rider who keeps them screwed in 
the animal's flanks eventually gains the victory. 
But such triumphs of severity and main force 
are the last resource of an authority that ought 
never to be disputed, as springing less from fear 
than confidence and good- will. 

It cannot be denied that there are many fools 
in the world, yet, regarding matters of opinion, 
the majority are generally right. A top-boot 
has an unfinished look without its appendage 
of shining steel ; and, although some sportsmen 
assure us they dispense with rowels, it is rare to 
find one so indifferent to appearances as not to 
wear spurs. There must be some good reason 
for this general adoption of an instrument that, 
from the days of chivalry, has been the very 
stamp and badge of a superiority which the man 
on horseback assumes over the man on foot. 
Let us weigh the arguments for and against this 
emblem of kni.ohthood before we decide. In 



TEE ABUSE OF THE SPUB 67 

the riding-school, and particularly for military 
purposes, when the dragoon's right hand is 
required for his weapon, these aids, as they are 
called, seem to enhance that pressure of the leg 
which acts on the horse's quarters, as the rein 
on his forehand, bringing his whole body into 
the required position. Perhaps if the boot were 
totally unarmed much time might be lost in 
making his pupil understand the horseman's 
wishes, but any one who has ridden a perfectly 
trained charger knows how much more accu- 
rately it answers to the leg than the heel, and 
how awkwardly a horse acquits himself that has 
been broke in very sharp spurs ; every touch 
causing it to wince and swerve too far in the 
required direction, glancing off at a tangent, 
like a boat that is over ready in answering her 
helm. Patience and a light switch, I believe, 
would fulfil all the purposes of the spur, even in 
the manege ; but delay is doubtless a drawback, 
and there are reasons for going the shortest way 
on occasion, even if it be not the smoothest and 
the best. 

It is quite unnecessary, however, and even 
prejudicial, to have the rowels long and sharp. 
Nothing impedes tuition like fear; and fear in 
the animal creation is the offspring of pain. 

Granted, then, that the spur may be applied 
advantageously in the school, let us see how far 
it is useful on the road or in the hunting-field. 



68 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

We will start by supposing that you do not 
possess a really perfect hack ; that desirable 
animal must, doubtless, exist somewhere, but, 
like Pegasus, is more often talked of than seen. 
Nevertheless, the roadster that carries you to 
business or pleasure is a sound, active, useful 
beast, with safe, quick action, good shoulders, 
of course, and a walling disposition, particularly 
when turned towards home. How often in a 
week do you touch it with the spurs? Once, 
perhaps, by some bridle-gate, craftily hung at 
precisely the angle which prevents your reaching 
its latch or hasp. And what is the result of 
this little display of vexation ? Your hack gets 
flurried, sticks his nose in the air, refuses to 
back, and compels you at last to open the gate 
with your wrong hand, rubbing your knee against 
the post as he pushes through in unseemly haste, 
for fear of another prod. When late for dinner, 
or hurrying home to outstrip the coming shower, 
you may fondly imagine that but for "the 
persuaders" you would have been drenched to 
the skin; and, relating your adventures at the 
fire-side, will probably declare that "you stuck 
the spurs into him the last mile, and came along 
as hard as he could drive." But, if you were to 
visit him in the stable, you would probably find 
his flanks untouched, and would, I am sure, be 
pleased rather than disappointed at the dis- 
covery. Happily, not one man in ten knows 



TEE ABUSE OF THE SPUR G9 

lioiu to spur a horse, and the tenth is often the 
most unwilhng to administer so severe a punish- 
ment. 

Ladies, however, are not so merciful. Perhaps 
because they have but one, they use this stimu- 
lant liberally, and without compunction. From 
their seat, and shortness of stirrup, every kick 
tells home. Concealed under a riding-habit, 
these vigorous applications are unsuspected by 
lookers-on ; and the unwary wonder why, in the 
streets of London or the Park, a ladies' horse 
always appears to go in a lighter and livelier 
form than that of her male companion. "It's 
a woman's hand," says the admiring pedestrian. 
" Not a bit of it," answers the cynic who knows; 
" it's a woman's heel." 

But however sparing you may be of the spurs 
in lane or bridle-road, you are tempted to ply 
them far too freely in the anxiety and excitement 
of the hunting-field. Have you ever noticed the 
appearance of a white horse at the conclusion 
of some merry gallop over a strongly fenced 
country ? The pure conspicuous colour tells sad 
tales, and the smooth thin-skinned flanks are 
too often stained and plastered with red. Many 
bad horsemen spur their horses without meaning 
it ; many worse, mean to spur their horses at 
every fence, and do. 

A Leicestershire notability, of the last genera- 
tion, once dubbed a rival with the expressive 



70 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

title of "a hard funker;" and the term, so 
happily applied, fully rendered what he meant. 
Of all riders, "the hard f miker " is the most 
unmerciful to his beast ; at every turn he uses 
his spurs cruelly, not because he is liard^ but 
because he fmiks. Let us watch him crossing a 
country, observing his style as a warning rather 
than an example. 

Hesitation and hurry are his principal faults, 
practised with much impartiality, in alternate 
extremes. Though half-way across a field, he 
is still undecided where to get out. This vacil- 
lation communicates itself in electric sympathy 
to his horse, and both go wavering down to 
their fence, without the slightest idea what they 
mean to do when they arrive. Some ten strides 
off the rider makes up his mind, selecting, 
probably, an extremely awkward place, for no 
courage is so desperate as that which is founded 
on fear. Want of determination is now supple- 
mented by excessive haste and with incessant 
application of the spurs, his poor horse is hurried 
wildly at the leap. That it gets over without 
falling, as happens oftener than might be sup- 
posed, seems due to activity in the animal rather 
than sagacity in the rider, and a strong instinct 
of self-preservation in both ; but such a process, 
repeated again and again during a gallop, even 
of twenty minutes, tells fearfully on wind and 
muscle, nor have many hunters sufficient powers 



THE ABUSE OF THE SPUR 71 

of endurance to carry these exacting performers 
through a run. 

Still the '' h. f." would be nothing without his 
spurs, and I grant that to him these instruments 
are indispensable, if he is to get from one field 
to another ; but of what use are they to such 
men as Mr. Gilmour, Captain Coventry, Sir 
Frederic Johnston, Captain Boyce, Mr. Hugh 
Lowther, and a host more that I could name, 
who seem to glide over Leicestershire, and other 
strongly-fenced countries, as a bird glides through 
the air. Day after day, unless accidentally scored 
in a fall, you may look in vain for a spur-mark 
on their horses' sides. Shoulders and quarters, 
indeed, are reddened by gashes from a hundred 
thorns ; but the virgin spot, a handsbreadth 
behind the girths, is pure and stainless still. 
Yet not one of the gentlemen I have named will 
ride without the instrument he uses so rarely, 
if at all ; and they must cherish, therefore, some 
belief in its virtue, wdien called into play, strong 
enough to counterbalance its indisputable disad- 
vantages — notably, the stabbing of a hunter's 
side, when its rider's foot is turned outwards 
by a stake or grower, and the tearing of its back 
or quarters in the struggle and confusion of a 
fall. There is one excellent reason that, perhaps, 
I may have overlooked. It is tiresome to answer 
the same question over and over again, and in a 
field of 200 sportsmen you are sure to be asked 



72 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

almost as many times, "Why don't you wear 
spm^s?" if you set appearances at defiance by 
coming into the hunting-field without them. 

In my personal recollection I can only call to 
mind one man who systematically abjured so 
essential a finish to the horseman's dress and 
equipment. This was Mr. Tomline of Leigh 
Lodge, a Leicestershire farmer and horse-dealer, 
well-known some thirty years ago as one of the 
finest riders and straightest goers that ever got 
into a saddle. His costume, indeed, was not of 
so careful a nature that want of completeness in 
any one particular could spoil the general effect. 
He alwmjs hunted in a rusty, worn pilot-jacket, 
drab breeches with strings untied, brown-topped 
boots, and a large ill-fitting hat, carrying in his 
hand a ground-ash plant, totally useless for 
opening a gate if he did not happen to jump it. 
Yet thus accoutred, and generally on a young 
one, so long as his horse's condition lasted, he 
was sure to be in front, and, when the fences 
were rougher than common, with but two or 
three companions at most. 

I have not yet forgotten the style in which I 
once saw him coax a four-year-old to jump a 
"bottom" under Launde, fortified by a high 
post and rail — down-hill — a bad take off — and 
almost a ravine on the far side ! With his 
powerful grip and exquisite handling, he seemed 
to persuade the pupil that it was as willing as 
the master. 



THE ABUSE OF THE SPUB 73 

My own spurs were four inches long, and 
I was riding the best hunter in my stable, but I 
don't think I would have had the same place 
for fifty pounds ! 

A paradox, like an Irishman's bull, will some- 
times convey our meaning more impressively 
than a logical statement. It seems paradoxical, 
yet I believe it is sound sense to say that no man 
should arm his heels with spurs unless he is so 
good a rider as to be sure they shall not touch 
his horse. To punish him with them involun- 
tarily is, of course, like any other blunder totally 
inadmissible, but when applied with intention, 
they should be used sparingly and only as a last 
resource. That there are occasions on which 
they rouse a horse's energies for a momentary 
effort, I am disposed to admit less from my own 
experience than the opinion of those for whose 
practical knowledge in all such matters I have 
the greatest respect. Both the Messrs. Coventry, 
in common with other first-rate steeple-chase 
riders, advocate their use on rare occasions and 
under peculiar circumstances. Poor Jem Mason 
never went hunting without them, and would 
not, I think, have hesitated to apply them pretty 
freely if required, but then these could all spur 
their horses in the right place, leaning back the 
while and altering in no way the force and bearing 
of hand or seat. Most men, on the contrary, 
stoop forward and let their horses' heads go when 



74 BIDING BECOLLEGTIONS 

engaged in this method of compulsion, and even 
if their heels do reach the mark, by no means a 
certainty, gain but little with the rowels com- 
pared to all they lose with the reins. 

There is no fault in a hunter so annoying to a 
man Avhose heart is in the sport as a tendency to 
refuse. It utterly defeats the timid and damps 
the courage of the bold, while even to him who 
rides that he may hunt rather than hunts that he 
may ride, it is intensely provoking, as he is apt 
to lose by it that start which is so invaluable in 
a quick thing, and, when a large field are all 
struggling for the same object, so difficult to 
regain. This perversity of disposition too, is 
very apt to be displayed at some fence that 
will not admit of half-measures, such as a rail 
low enough to jump, but too strong to break, or 
a ditch so wide and deep that it must not be 
attempted as a standing leap. In these cases a 
vigorous dig with the spurs at the last moment 
will sometimes have an excellent effect. But it 
must not be trusted as an unfailing remedy. 
Nearly as many hunters will resent so broad a 
hint, by stopping short, and turning restive, as 
will spring generously forward, and make a 
sudden effort in answer to the appeal. For this, 
as for every other requirement of equitation, 
much depends on an insight into his character, 
whom an enthusiastic friend of mine designates 
" the bolder and wiser animal of the two." 



THE ABUSE OF THE SPUB 75 

Few men go out hunting with the expectation 
of encountering more than one or two falls in 
the best of runs, although the score sometimes 
increases very rapidly, when a good and gallant 
horse is getting tired towards the finish. Twenty 
croppers in a season, if he is well-mounted, seems 
a high average for the most determined of 
bruisers, but a man, whom circumstances impel 
to ride whatever he can lay hands on, must take 
into consideration how he can best rise from the 
ground unhurt with no less forethought than he 
asks his way to the meet or inquires into the 
condition of his mount. To such a bold rider 
the spur may seem an indispensable article, but 
he must remember that even if its application 
should save him on occasion, which I am not 
altogether prepared to admit, the appendage 
itself is most inconvenient when down. I cannot 
remember a single instance of a man's foot re- 
maining fixed in the stirrup who was riding 
without spurs. I do not mean to say such a 
catastrophe is impossible, but I have good 
reason to know that the buckle on the instep, 
which when brightly polished imparts such a 
finish to the lustrous wrinkles of a well-made 
boot, is extremely apt to catch in the angle of 
the stirrup iron, and hold us fast at the very 
moment when it is most important to our safety 
we should be free. 

I have headed this chapter " The Abuse of the 



76 BIDING BEGOLLEGTIONS 

Spur," because I hold that implement of horse- 
manship to be in general most unmercifully 
abused, so much so that I believe it would be 
far better for the majority of horses, and riders 
too, if it had never come into vogue. The perfect 
equestrian may be trusted indeed with rowels 
sharp and long as those that jingle at the 
Mexican's heels on his boundless prairies but, 
as in the days of chivalry, these ornaments 
should be won by prowess to be worn with 
honour; and I firmly believe that nine out of 
every ten men who come out hunting would be 
better and more safely carried if they left their 
spurs at home. 



CHAPTEE V 

HAND 

What is it ? Intellect, nerve, sympathy, con- 
fidence, skill ? None of these can be said to 
constitute this quality; rather it is a combina- 
tion of all, with something superinduced that 
can only be called a magnetic affinity between 
the aggressive spirit of man and the ductile 
nature of the beast. 

" He spurred the old horse, and he held him tight, 
And he leaped him out over the wall," 

says Kingsley, in his stirring ballad of " The 
Knight's Last Leap at Alten-ahr ; " and 
Kingsley, an excellent rider himself, thus de- 
scribed exactly how the animal should have been 
put at its formidable fence. Most poets would 
have let their horse's head go — the loose rein is 
a favourite method of making play in literature 
— and a fatal refusal must have been the result. 
The German Knight, however, whose past life 



78 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

seems to have been no less disreputable than his 
end was tragic, had not 

" Lived by the saddle for years a score," 

to fail in his horsemanship at the finish, and so, 
when he came to jump his last fence negotiated 
it with no less skill than daring — grim, quiet, 
resolute, strong of seat, and firm of hand. The 
latter quality seems, however, much the rarer of 
the two. For ten men who can stick to the 
saddle like Centaurs you will hardly find one 
gifted with that nicety of touch which horses so 
willingly obey, and which, if not inborn, seems 
as difiicult to acquire by practice as the draughts- 
man's eye for outline, or the musician's ear for 
sound. Attention, reflection, painstaking, and 
common sense, can, nevertheless, do much ; and, 
if the brain will only take the trouble to think, 
the clumsiest fingers that ever mismanaged a 
bridle may be taught in time to humour it like 
a silken thread. 

I have been told, though I never tried the 
experiment, that if you take bold chanticleer 
from his perch, and, placing his bill on a table, 
draw from it a line of chalk by candle-light, the 
poor dazed fowl makes no attempt to stir from 
this imaginary bondage, persuaded that it is 
secured by a cord it has not strength enough 
to break. We should never get on horseback 
without remembering this unaccountable illusion; 



HAND 79 

our control by means of the bridle is, in reality, 
little more substantial than the chalk-line that 
seems to keep the bird in durance. It should be 
our first consideration so to manage the rein we 
handle as never to give our horse the opportunity 
of discovering our weakness and his own strength. 
How is this to be effected ? By letting his 
head go, and allowing him to carry us where he 
will ? Certainly not, or we should have no need 
for the bridle at all. By pulling at him, then, 
with main strength, and trjdng the muscular 
power of our arms against that of his shoulders 
and neck? Comparing these relative forces again, 
we are constrained to answer. Certainly not ; the 
art of control is essentially founded on compro- 
mise. In riding, as in diplomacy, we must 
always be ready to give an inch that we may 
take an ell. The first principle of horsemanship 
is to make the animal believe we can rule its 
wildest mood ; the next, to prevent, at any 
sacrifice, the submission of this plausible theory 
to proof. You get on a horse you have never 
seen before, improperly bitted, we may fairly 
suppose, for few men would think of wasting as 
many seconds on their bridle as they devote 
minutes to their boots and breeches. You infer, 
from his wild eye and restless ear, that he is "a 
bit of a romp ; " and you observe, with some 
concern, that surrounding circumstances, a race, 
a review, a coursing meeting, or a sure find, it 



80 BIDING EECOLLECTIONS 

matters little which, are likely to rouse all the 
tumultuous propensities of his nature. Obviously 
it would be exceedingly bad policy to have the 
slightest misunderstanding. The stone of 
Sisyphus gathered impetus less rapidly than 
does a horse who is getting the better of his 
rider ; and John Gilpin was not the first eques- 
trian, by a good man}^, for whom 

" The trot became a gallop soon, 
In spite of curb and rein." 

" I am the owner, I wish I could say the 
master^ of the four best hunters I ever had in 
my life," wrote one of the finest horsemen in 
Europe to a brother proficient in the art ; and 
although so frank an avowal would have seemed 
less surprising from an inferior performer, his 
friend, w^ho was also in the habit of riding any- 
thing, anywhere, and over everything, doubtless 
understood perfectly what he meant. 

Now in equitation there can be no divided 
empire ; and the horse will most assuredly be 
master if the man is not. In the interests of 
good government, then, bew^are how you let your 
authority literally slip through your fingers, for, 
once lost, it will not easily be regained. 

Draw your reins gently to an equal length, and 
ascertain the precise bearing on your horse's 
mouth that seems, while he is yet in a walk, to 
influence his action without offending his sensi- 



HAND 81 

tiveness. But this cannot be accomplished with 
the hands alone ; these members, though 
supposed to be the prime agents of control, 
will do little without the assistance of legs and 
knees pressing the sides and flanks of the animal, 
so as to urge him against the touch of his bit, 
from which he will probably show a tendency to 
recoil, and, as it is roughly called, "forcing him 
into his bridle." 

The absence of this leg-power is an incalculable 
disadvantage to ladies, and affords the strongest 
reason, amongst many, why they should be 
mounted only on temperate and perfectly broken 
horses. How much oftener would they come to 
grief but that their seat compels them to ride 
with such long reins as insure light hands, and 
that their finer sympathy seems fully understood 
and gratefully appreciated by the most sympa- 
thetic of all the brute creation ! 

The style adopted by good horsewomen, 
especially in crossing a country, has in it much 
to be admired, something, also, to be deprecated 
and deplored. They allow their horses plenty of 
liberty, and certainly interfere but little with 
their heads, even at the greatest emergencies ; 
but their ideas of pace are unreasonably liberal, 
and they are too apt to " chance it " at the 
fences, encouraging with voice and whip the 
haste that in the last few strides it is judicious 
to repress. It seems to me they are safer in a 

6 



82 HIDING BECOLLEGTIONS 

bank-and-ditch country than amongst the high 
strong fences of the grazing districts, where a 
horse must be roused and held together that he 
may jump well up in the air, and extend himself 
afterwards, so as to cover the wide uncertainties 
he may find on the landing side. For a bank he 
is pretty sure to collect himself without troubling 
his rider ; and this is, perhaps, why Irishmen, as 
a general rule, use such light bridles. 

Now a woman cannot possibly bring her horse 
up to a high staked-and-bound fence, out of deep 
ground, with the strength and resolution of a 
man, whose very grip in the saddle seems to 
extort from the animal its utmost energies. 
Half measures are fatal in a difficulty, and, as 
she seems unable to interfere with good effect 
she is wise to let it alone. 

We may learn from her, however, one of the 
most effective secrets of the whole art, and that 
is, to ride with long reins. " Always give them 
plenty of rope," said poor Jem Mason, when 
instructing a beginner ; and he certainly practised 
what he preached. I have seen his hands carried 
so high as to be level with his elbows, but his 
horse's head was always in the right place ; and to 
this must be attributed the fact that, while he rode 
to hounds straighter than anybody else, he got 
comparatively few falls. A man with long reins 
not only affords his horse greater liberty at his 
fences, but allows him every chance of recovery 



HAND 83 

should he get into difficulties on landing, the 
rider not being pulled with a jerk on the animal's 
neck and shoulders, so as to throw both of them 
down, when they ought to have got off with a 
scramble. 

Let us return to the horse you have lately 
mounted not without certain misgivings that he 
may be tempted to insubordination under the 
excitement of tumult, rivalry, or noise. When 
you have discovered the amount of repression, 
probably very slight, that he accepts without 
resentment, at a walk, increase your pace 
gradually, still with your legs keeping him well 
into his bridle, carrying your hands low down on 
his withers, and, if you take my advice, with a 
rein in each. You will find this method affords 
you great control of your horse's head, and en- 
ables you, by drawing the bit through his mouth, 
to counteract any arrangement on his part for a 
dead pull, which could have but one result. 
Should you, moreover, find it necessary to jump, 
you can thus hold him perfectly straight at 
his fences, so that he must either decline al- 
together or go exactly where you put him. 
Young, headstrong horses are exceedingly apt to 
swerve from the place selected for them, and to 
rise sideways at some strong bit of timber, or 
impracticable part of a bullfinch ; and this is a 
most dangerous experiment, causing the worst 
kind of falls to which the sportsman is liable. 



84 BIDING BEGOLLEGTIONS 

Eiding thus two-handed, you will probably 
find your new acquaintance "bends " to you in 
his canter better than in his trot, and if so, you 
may safely push him to a gallop, taking great- 
care, however, not to let him extend himself 
too much. When he goes on his shoulders, he 
becomes a free agent ; so long as his haunches 
are under him, you can keep him, as it is called, 
" in your hand." 

There is considerable scope for thought in this 
exercise of manual skill, and it is always wise to 
save labour of body by use of brain. Take care 
then, to have your front clear, so that your horse 
may flatter himself he is leading his comrades, 
when he will not give you half so much trouble 
to retain him in reasonable bounds. Strategy is 
here required no less than tactics, and horseman- 
ship even as regards the bridle, is quite as much 
a matter of head as hand. If you are out hunt- 
ing, and have got thus far on good terms, you 
will probably now be tempted to indulge in a 
leap. We cannot, unfortunately, select those 
obstacles exactly as we wish ; it is quite possible 
your fence may be high, strong, and awkward, 
with every probability of a fall. Take your 
horse at it quietly, but resolutely, in a canter, 
remembering that the quicker and shorte?' his 
strides, while gathering impetus, the greater 
effort he can make when he makes his spring. 
Above all, measure with your eye, and endeavour 



HAND 85 

to show him by the clip of your thighs, and the 
sway of your body, exactly where he should take 
off. On this important point depends, almost 
entirely, the success of your leap. Half a stride 
means some six or seven feet ; to leave the 
ground that much too soon adds the width of a 
fair-sized ditch to his task, and if the sum total 
prove too much for him you cannot be surprised 
at the result. This is, I think, one of the most 
important points in horsemanship as applied to 
riding across a country. It is a detail in which 
Lord Wilton particularly excels, and although so 
good a huntsman must despise a compliment to 
his mere riding, I cannot refrain from mentioning 
Tom Firr, as another proficient who possesses 
this enviable knack in an extraordinary degree. 

Many of us can remember " Cap " Tomline, a 
professional "rough rider," living at or near 
Billesden, within the last twenty years, as fine a 
horseman as his namesake, whom I have already 
mentioned, and a somewhat lighter weight. For 
one sovereign, " Cap," as we used to call him, 
was delighted to ride anybody's horse under any 
circumstances, over, or into any kind of fence 
the owner chose to point out. After going 
brilliantly through a run, I have seen him, to 
my mind most injudiciously, desired to lark 
home alongside, while we watched his per- 
formance from the road. He was particularly 
fond of timber, and notwithstanding that his 



86 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

horse was usually rash, inexperienced, or bad- 
tempered, otherwise he would not have been 
riding him, I can call to mind very few occasions 
on which I saw him down. One unusually open 
winter, when he hunted live and six days a week 
from October to April, be told me he had only 
fifteen falls, and that taking the seasons as they 
came, thirteen was about his average. Nor was 
he a very light-weight — spare, lengthy, and 
muscular, he turned twelve stone in his hunting 
clothes, which were by no means of costly 
material. Horses rarely refused with him, and 
though they often had a scramble for it, as 
seldom fell, but under his method of riding, 
sitting well down in the saddle, with the reins in 
both hands, they never took off wrong, and in 
this lay the great secret of his superiority. When I 
knew him he was an exceedingly temperate man ; 
for many years I believe he drank only water, 
and he eschewed tobacco in every form. " The 
reason you gentlemen have such had nerves,'' he 
said to me, jogging home to Melton one evening 
in the dusk that alwaj^s meets us about Somerby, 
" is because you smoke so much. It turns your 
brains to a kind of vapour ! " The inference was 
startling, 1 thought, and not complimentary, but 
there might be some truth in it nevertheless. 

We have put off a great deal of time at our 
first fence, let us do it without a fall, if we 
can. 



HAND 87 

When a hunter's quarters are under him in 
taking off, he has them ready to help him over 
any unforeseen difficulty that may confront him 
on the other side. Should there be a bank from 
v/hich he can get a purchase for a second effort, 
he will poise himself on it lightly as a bird, 
or perhaps, dropping his hind-legs only, shoot 
himself well into the next field, with that delight- 
ful elasticity which, met by a corresponding 
action of his rider's loins, imparts to the horse- 
man such sensations of confidence and dexterity 
as are felt by some buoyant swimmer, wafted 
home on the roll of an incoming wave. Strong- 
hocks and thighs, a mutual predilection for the 
chase, a bold heart between the saddle-flaps, 
another under the waistcoat, and a pair of light 
hands, form a combination that few fences after 
Christmas are strong enough or blind enough to 
put down. 

And now please not to forget tha.t soundest of 
maxims, applicable to all affairs alike by land or 
sea — "While she lies her course, let the ship 
steer herself." If your horse is going to his own 
satisfaction, do not be too particular that he 
should go entirely to yours. So long as you can 
steady him, never mind that he carries his head 
a little up or a little down. If he shakes it you 
know you have got him, and can pull him off in 
a hundred yards. Keep your hands quiet and 
not too low. It is a well-known fact, of which, 



88 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

however, many draughtsmen seem ignorant, that 
the horse in action never puts his forefeet beyond 
his nose. You need only watch the finish of a 
race to be satisfied of this, and indeed the Derby 
winner in his supreme effort is ahnost as straight 
as an old-fashioned frigate, from stem to stern, 
while a line dropped perpendicularly from his 
muzzle would exactly touch the tips of his toes. 
Now, if your hands are on each side of your 
horse's withers, you make him bend his neck so 
much as to contract his stride within three- 
quarter speed, whereas when you carry them 
about the level of your own hips, and nearly as 
far back, he has enough freedom of head to 
extend himself without getting beyond your 
control, and room besides to look about him, 
of which be sure he will avail himself for your 
mutual advantage. 

I have ridden hunters that obviously found 
great pleasure in watching hounds, and, except 
to measure their fences, would never take their 
eyes oS the pack from field to field, so long as 
we could keep it in sight. These animals too, 
were invariably fine jumpers, free, generous, 
light-hearted, and as wise as they were bold. 

I heard a very superior performer once remark 
that he not only rode every horse differently, but 
he rode the same horse differently at every fence. 

All I can say is, he used to ride them all in 
the same place, well up with the hounds, but I 



HAND 89 

think I understand what he meant. He had his 
system of course, hke every other master of the 
art, but it admitted of endless variations accord- 
ing to circumstances and the exigencies of the 
case. No man, I conclude, rides so fast at a 
wall as a brook, though he takes equal pains with 
his handling in both cases, if in a different way, 
nor would he deny a half-tired animal that 
support, amounting even to a dead pull, which 
might cause a hunter fresh out of his stable to 
imagine his utmost exertions were required forth- 
with. Nevertheless, whether "lobbing along" 
through deep ground at the punishing period, 
when we wish our fun was over, or fingering a 
rash one delicately for his first fence, a stile, we 
will say, downhill with a bad take-off, when we 
could almost wish it had not begun, we equally 
require such a combination of skill, science, and 
sagacity, or rather common sense, as goes by the 
name of " hand." Y/hen the player possesses 
this quality in perfection it is wonderful how 
much can be done with the instrument of which 
he holds the strings. I remember seeing the 
Reverend John Bower, an extraordinarily fine 
rider of the last generation, hand his horse over 
an ugly iron-bound stile, on to some stepping- 
stones, with a drop of six or seven feet, into a 
Leicestershire lane, as calmly as if the animal 
had been a lady whom he was taking out for a 
walk. He pulled it back into a trot, sitting very 



90 BIDING BEGOLLECTIONS 

close and quiet, with his hand raised two or 
three inches above the withers, and I can still 
recall, as if I had seen it yesterday, the curve of 
neck and quarters, as, gently mouthing the bit, 
that well-broken hunter poised lightly for its 
spring, and landing in the same collected form, 
picked its way daintily, step by step, down the 
declivity, like a cat. There was a large field out, 
but though Leicestershire then, as now, had no 
lack of bold and jealous riders, who could use 
heads, hands, and beyond all, their heels, nobody 
followed him, and I think the attempt was better 
left alone. 

Another clergyman of our own day, whose 
name I forbear mentioning, because I think he 
would dislike it for professional reasons, has the 
finest bridle-hand of any one I know. " You 
good man," I once heard a foreigner observe to 
this gentleman, in allusion to his bold style of 
riding ; "it no matter if you break your neck ! " 
And although I cannot look on the loss of such 
valuable lives from the same point of view as 
this Continental moralist, I may be permitted to 
regret the present scarcity of clergymen in the 
hunting-field. It redounds greatly to their credit, 
for we know how many of them deny themselves 
a harmless pleasure rather than offend " the 
weaker brethren," but what a dog in the manger 
must the weaker brother be ! 

I have never heard that these " hunting 



HAND 91 

parsons," as they are called, neglect the smallest 
detail of duty to indulge in their favourite sport, 
but when they do come out you may be sure to 
see them in the front rank. Can it be that 
the weaker brother is jealous of his pastor's 
superiority in the saddle ? I hope not. At any 
rate it seems unfair to cavil at the enjoyment by 
another of the pursuit we affect ourselves. Let 
us show more even-handed justice, if not more 
charity, and endeavour at least to follow the 
good man's example in the parish, though we 
are afraid to ride his line across the fields. 

It would be endless to enter on all the different 
styles of horsemanship in which fine hands are 
of the utmost utility. On the race-course, for 
instance, it seems to an outsider that the whole 
performance of the jockey is merely a dead pull 
from end to end. But only watch the lightest 
urchin that is flung on a two-year-old to scramble 
home five furlongs as fast as ever he can come ; 
you will soon be satisfied that even in these 
tumultuous flights there is room for the display 
of judgment, patience, though briefly tried, and 
manual skill. The same art is exercised on the 
light smooth snaffle, held in tenacious grasp, that 
causes the heavily-bitted charger to dance and 
"passage" in the school. It differs only in 
direction and degree. As much dexterity is 
required to prevent some playful flyer recently 
put in training from breaking out in a game of 



92 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

romps, when he ought to bo minding his business 
in the " string " as to call forth the well-drilled 
efforts of a war-horse, answering wrist and leg 
with disciplined activity, ready to "rein back," 
"pass," "wheel,"— 

" And high curvet that not in vain, 
The sword-sway may descend amain 
On foeman's casque below." 

Chifney, the great jocl^ey of his day, wrote an 
elaborate treatise on handling, laying down the 
somewhat untenable position, that even a race- 
horse should be held as if with a silken thread. 

I have noticed, too, that our best steeplechase 
riders have particularly line hands when cross- 
ing a country with hounds ; nor does their pro- 
fessional practice seem to make them over-hasty 
at their fences, when there is time to do these 
with deliberation. I imagine that to ride a 
steeplechase well, over a strong line, is the 
highest possible test of what we may call " all- 
round " horsemanship. My own experience in 
the silk jacket has been of the slightest ; and 
I confess that, like Falstaff with his reasons, I 
never fancied being rattled quite so fast at my 
fences " on compulsion." 

One of the finest pieces of riding I ever 
witnessed was in a steeplechase held at Melton, 
as long ago as the year 1864, when, happening 



HAND 93 

to stand near the brook, eighteen feet of water ^ I 
observed my friend Captain Coventry come down 
at it. Choosing sound ground and a clear place, 
for it was already beginning to fill with numerous 
competitors, he set his horse going, at about 
a hundred yards from the brink, in the most 
masterly manner, increasing the pace resolutely 
but gradually, so as not to flurry or cause the 
animal to change his leg, nearly to full speed 
before he took off. I could not have believed it 
possible to make a horse go so fast in so collected 
a form ; but with the rider's strength in the 
saddle, and perfectly skilful hands, he accom- 
plished the feat, and got well over, I need hardly 
say, in his stride. 

But, although a fine " bridle-hand," as it is 
called, proves of such advantage to the horse- 
man in the hurry-skurry of a steeplechase or a 
very quick thing with hounds, its niceties come 
more readily under the notice of an observer on 
the road than in the field. Perhaps the Eide in 
Hyde Park is the place of all others where this 
quality is most appreciated, and, shall we add ? 
most rarely to be found. A perfect Park hack, 
that can walk or canter five miles an hour, no 
light criterion of action and balance, should also 
be so well broke, and so well ridden, as to change 
its leg, if asked to do so, at every stride. " With 
woven paces," if not " with waving arms," I 
have seen rider and horse threading in and out 



94 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

the trees that bisect Kotten Eow, without miss- 
ing one, for half a mile on end ; the animal 
leading with near or off leg, as it inclined to left 
or right, guided only by the inflection of the 
rider's body, and the touch, too light to be called 
a pressure, of his knee and leg. How seldom 
does one see a horse ridden properly round a 
corner. He is usually allowed to turn on his 
shoulders, with his hind-legs too far back to be 
of the slightest assistance if he slips or stumbles, 
and should the foothold be greasy, as may 
happen in London streets, down he comes flat 
on his side. Even at a walk, or slow trot, he 
should be collected, and his outer flank pressed 
inwards by his rider's heel, so that the motive 
power in hocks and thighs is kept under his own 
body, and the weight on his back. In the canter 
it stands to reason that he should lead with the 
inner leg, otherwise it is very possible he may 
cross the other over it, and fall like a lump of 
lead. 

I remember seeing the famous Lord Anglesey 
ride his hack at that pace nineteen times out of 
Piccadilly into Albemarle Street, before it turned 
the corner exactly to his mind. The handsome 
old warrior who loohed no less distinguished than 
he was, had, as we know, a cork leg, and its 
oscillation no doubt interfered with those niceties 
of horsemanship in which he delighted. Never- 
theless at the twentieth trial he succeeded, and 



HAND 95 

a large crowd, collected to watch him, seemed 
glad of an opportunity to give their Waterloo 
hero a hearty cheer as he rode away. 

Perhaps the finest pair of hands to be seen 
amongst the frequenters of the Park in the 
present day belong to Mr. Mackenzie Greaves, a 
retired cavalry officer of our own service, who, 
passionately fond of hunting and everything 
connected with horses, has lately turned his 
attention to the subtleties of the haute ecole, 
nowhere better understood, by a select few, than 
in Paris, where he usually resides. To watch 
this gentleman on a horse he has broken in him- 
self, gliding through the crowd, as if by mere 
volition, with the smoothness, ease, and rapidity 
of a fish arrowing up a stream, makes one quite 
understand how the myth of the Centaur origi- 
nated in the sculpture and poetry of Greece. 

In common with General Laurenson, whose 
name I have already mentioned as just such 
another proficient, his system is very similar to 
that of Monsieur Baucher, one of the few lovers 
of the animal either in France or England, who 
have so studied its character as to reduce equine 
education to a science. Its details are far too 
elaborate to enter on here, but one of its first 
principles, applied in the most elementary 
tuition, is never to let the horse recoil from his 
bridle, 

" Drop your hands ! " say nihe good riders out 



96 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

of ten, when the pupil's head is thrown up to 
avoid control. " Not so," replies Baucher. " On 
the contrary, tighten and increase your pressure 
more and more, keeping the rebel up to his bit 
with legs and spurs if necessary, till he yields, 
not you ; then on the instant, rapidly and 
dexterously, as you would strike in fly-fishing, 
give to him, and he will come into your hand ! " 

I have tried his method myself, in more than 
one instance, and am inclined to think it is 
founded on common sense. 

But in all our dealings with him, we should 
remember that the horse's mouth is naturally 
delicate and sensitive though we so often find it 
hardened by violence and ill-usa.ge. The amount 
of force we apply, therefore, whether small or 
great, should be measured no less accurately 
than the drops of laudanum administered to a 
patient by the nurse. Reins are intended for the 
guidance of the horse, not the support of his 
rider, and if you do not feel secure without hold- 
ing on by something, rather than pluck at his 
mouth, accept the ridicule of the position with 
its safety, and grasp the mane ! 

Seriously, you may do worse in a difficulty when 
your balance is in danger, and instinct prompts 
you to restore it, as, if a horse is struggling out of 
a bog, has dropped his hind-legs in a brook, or 
otherwise come on his nose without actually fall- 
ing, nothing so impedes his endeavours to right 



HAND 97 

himself as a tug of the bridle at an inopportune 
moment. That instrument should be used for 
its legitimate purposes alone, and a strong seat 
in the saddle is the first essential for a light 
hand on the rein. 



CHAPTEE YI 

SEAT 

Some people tell you they ride by '' balance," 
others by " grip." I think a man might as well 
say he played the fiddle by "finger," or by ear. 
Surely in either case a combination of both is 
required to sustain the performance with har- 
mony and success. The grip preserves the 
balance, Avhich in turn prevents the grip becom- 
ing irksome. To depend on the one alone is to 
come home very often with a dirty coat, to cling 
wholly by the other is to court as much fatigue 
in a day as ought to serve for a week. I have 
more than once compared riding to swimming, 
it seems to require the same buoyancy of spirits, 
the same venture of body, the same happy com- 
bination of confidence, strength, and skill. 

The seat a man finds easiest to himself, says 
the inimitable Mr. Jorrocks, " will in all humane 
probability be the easiest to his 'oss ! " and in 
this, as in every other remark of the humorous 
grocer, there is no little wisdom and truth. " If 



SEAT 99 

he go smooth, I am,^' * said a Frenchman, to 
whom a friend of mind offered a mount, " if he 
go rough, I shall not remain ! " and doubtless 
the primary object of getting into a saddle, is to 
stay there at our own convenience, so long as 
circumstances permit. 

But what a number of different attitudes do 
men adopt, in order to insure this permanent 
settlement. There is no position, from the 
tongs in the fender, to the tailor on his shop- 
board, into which the equestrian has not forced 
his unaccustomed limbs, to avoid involuntary 
separation from his beast. The dragoon of fifty 
years ago was drilled to ride with a straight leg, 
and his foot barely resting on the stirrup, 
whereas the oriental cavalry soldier, no mean 
proficient in the management of horse and 
weapon, tucks his knees up nearly to his chin, 
so that when he rises in the saddle, he towers 
above his little Arab as if he were standing 
rather than sitting on its back. The position, 
he argues, gives him a longer reach, and stronger 
purchase for the use of sword and spear. If we 
are to judge by illuminated copies of Froissart, 
and other contemporary chronicles, it would 
seem that the armour-clad knight of the olden 
time, trusting in the depth and security of his 
saddle, rode so long so to derive no assistance 
whatever from his stirrups, sitting down on his 

* J'y suis. 



100 BIDING BECOLLEGTIONS 

horse as much as possible, in dread, may be, lest 
the point of an adversary's lance should hoist 
him fairly out of his place over a cantle six 
inches high, and send him clanging to the 
ground, in mail and plate, surcoat, helmet and 
plumes, with his ladylove, squires, yeomen, the 
marshals of the lists, and all his feudal enemies 
looking on ! 

Now the length of stirrup with which a man 
should ride, and in its adjustment consists much 
of the ease, grace, and security of his position, 
depends on the conformation of his lower limbs. 
If his thighs are long in proportion to his frame, 
flat and somewhat curved inwards, he will sit 
very comfortably at the exact length that raises 
him clear of his horse's withers, when he stands 
up in his stirrups with his feet home, and the 
majority of men thus limbed, on the majority of 
horses, will find this a good general rule. But 
when the legs are short and muscular, the thighs 
round and thick, the whole frame square and 
strong, more like wrestling than dancing — and 
many very superior riders are of this figure — the 
leathers must be pulled up a couple of holes and 
the foot thrust a little more forward, to obtain 
the necessary security of seat, at a certain 
sacrifice of grace and even ease. To look as 
neat as one can is a compliment to sooiet}^, to be 
safe and comfortable is a duty to oneself. 

Much also depends on the animal we bestride. 



SEAT 101 

Horses low in the withers, and strong behind 
the saddle, particularly if inclined to " catch 
hold " a little, require in all cases rather shorter 
stirrups than their easier and truer-shaped stable- 
companions, nay, the varying roundness of barrel 
at different stages of condition affects the attitude 
of a rider, and most of us must have remarked, 
as horse and master get finer drawn towards the 
spring, how we let out the stirrups in proportion 
as we take in waistbelt, and saddle girths. Men 
rode well nevertheless, witness the Elgin marbles, 
before the invention of this invaluable aid to 
horsemanship ; and no equestrian can be con- 
sidered perfect who is unable in a plunge or leap 
to stick on his horse bare-backed. Every boy 
should be taught to ride without stirrups, but 
not till he is tall and strong enough to grasp his 
pony firmly between his knees. A child of six 
or seven might injure itself in the effort, and ten, 
or eleven, is an early age enough for our young 
gentleman to be initiated into the subtleties of 
the art. My own idea is that he should begin 
without reins, so as to acquire a seat totally in- 
dependent of his hands, and should never be 
trusted with a bridle till it is perfectly immaterial 
to him whether he has hold of it or not. Neither 
should it be restored, after his stirrups have been 
taken away, till he has again proved himself 
independent of its support. When he has learnt 
to canter round the school, and sit firm over a 



102 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

leaping bar, with his feet swinging loose, and his 
hands in his pockets, he will have become a 
better horseman than ninety-nine out of every 
hundred who go out hunting. Henceforward 
you may trust him to take care of himself and 
swim alone. 

In every art it is well to begin from the very 
first with the best method ; and I would instil 
into a pupil, even of the tenderest years, that 
although his legs, and especially his knees, are 
to be applied firmly to his pony's sides, as afford- 
ing a security against tumbling off, it is fro7n the 
loi7is that he must really ride, when all is said 
and done. 

I dare say most of us can remember the 
mechanical horse exhibited in Piccadilly some 
ten or twelve years ago, a German invention, 
remarkable for its ingenuity and the wonderful 
accuracy with wdiich it imitated, in an exag- 
gerated degree, the kicks, plunges, and other 
outrages practised by the most restive of the 
species to unseat their riders. Shaped in the 
truest symmetry, clad in a real horse's skin, 
with flowing mane and tail, this automaton 
represented the live animal in every particular, 
but for the pivot on which it turned, a shaft 
entering the belly below its girths, and com- 
municating through the floor with the machinery 
that set in motion and regulated its astonishing 
vagaries. On mounting, the illusion was com- 



SEAT 103 

plete. Its very neck was so constructed with 
hinges that, on pulHng at the bridle, it gave you 
its head without changing the direction of its 
body, exactly like an unbroken colt as yet in- 
tractable to the bit. At a word from the 
inventor, spoken in his own language to his 
assistants below, this artificial charger committed 
every kind of wickedness that could be devised 
by a fiend in equine shape. It reared straight 
on end ; it lunged forward with its nose between 
its fore-feet, and its tail elevated to a perpen- 
dicular, awkward and ungainly as that of a swan 
in reverse. It lay down on its side ; it rose to 
its legs with a bounce, and finally, if the rider's 
strength and dexterity enabled him still to 
remain in the saddle, it wheeled round and 
round with a velocity that could not fail at last 
to shoot him out of his seat on to the floor, 
humanely spread with mattresses, in anticipation 
of this inevitable catastrophe. It is needless to 
say how such an exhibition drew, with so horse- 
loving a public as our own. No gentleman who 
fancied he could "ride a bit" was satisfied till 
he had taken his shilling's worth and the 
mechanical horse had put him on his back. But 
for the mattresses, Piccadilly could have counted 
more broken collar-bones than ever did Lei- 
cestershire in the blindest and deepest of its 
Novembers. Eoughriders from the Life- Guards, 
Blues, Artillery, and half the cavalry regiments 



104 BIDING BEGOLLECTIONS 

in the service, came to try conclusions with the 
spectre ; and, Hke antagonists of some automaton 
chess-player, retired defeated and dismayed. 

For this universal failure, one could neither 
blame the men nor the military system taught 
in their schools. It stands to reason that human 
wind and muscle must sooner or later succumb 
to mechanical force. The inventor himself 
expressed surprise at the consummate horseman- 
ship displayed by many of his fallen visitors, and 
admitted that more than one rough-rider would 
have tired out and subjugated any living creature 
of real flesh and blood ; while the essayists 
universally declared the imitation so perfect, 
that at no period of the struggle could they 
believe they were contending with clock-work, 
rather than the natural efforts of some wild 
unbroken colt. 

But those who succeeded best, I remarked 
(and I speak with some little experience, having 
myself been indebted to the mattresses in my 
turn), were the horsemen who, allowing their 
loins to play freely, yielding more or less to every 
motion of the figure, did not trust exclusively 
for firmness of seat to the clasp of their knees 
and thighs. The mere balance rider had not a 
chance, the athlete who stuck on by main force 
found himself hurled into the air, with a violence 
proportioned to his own stubborn resistance ; but 
the artist who judiciously combined strength 



SEAT 105 

with skill, giving a little here that he might get 
a stronger purchase there, swaying his body 
loosely to meet and accompany every motion, 
while he kept his legs pressed hard against the 
saddle, withstood trick after trick, and shock 
after shock creditably enough, till a hint mut- 
tered in German that it was time to displace 
him, put such mechanism in motion as settled 
the matter forthwith. 

There was one detail, hovrever, to be observed 
in the equipment of the mechanical horse that 
brings us to a question I have heard discussed 
amongst the best riders with very decided 
opinions on either side. 

Formerly every saddle used to be made with 
padding about half an inch deep, sewn in the 
front rim of the flap against which a rider rests 
his knee, for the purpose, as it would seem, of 
affording him a stronger seat with its resistance 
and support. 

Thirty or forty years ago a fev/ noted sportsmen, 
despising such adventitious aid, began to adopt 
the open, or plain-flapped saddle ; and, although 
not universal, it has now come into general use. 
It would certainly, of the two, have been the 
better adapted to the automaton I have described, 
as an inequality of surface was sadly in the way 
when the figure in its downward perpendicular, 
brought the rider's foot parallel with the point 
of its shoulders. The man's calf then neces- 



106 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

sarily slipped over the padding of his saddle, 
and it was impossible for him to get his leg 
back to its right place in time for a fresh out- 
break when the model rose again to its proper 
level. 

As I would prefer an open saddle for the 
artificial, so I do for the natural horse, and I 
will explain why. 

I take it as a general and elementary rule, 
there is no better position for a rider than that 
which brings shoulder, hip, knee, and heel into 
one perpendicular line. A man thus placed on 
his horse cannot but sit well down with a bend 
in his back, and in this attitude, the one into 
which he would naturally fall, if riding at full 
speed, he has not only security of seat, but great 
command over the animal he bestrides. He 
will find, nevertheless, in crossing a country, 
or otherwise practising feats of horsemanship 
requiring the exercise of strength, that to get 
his knee an inch or two in advance of the 
correct line will afford such leverage as it were 
for the rest of his body as gives considerable 
advantage in any unusual difficulty, such as a 
drop-leap, for instance, with which he may have 
to contend. Now in the plain-flapped saddle, 
he can bend his leg as much as he likes, and 
put it indeed where he will. 

This facility, too, is very useful in smuggling 
through a gap by a tree, often the most con- 



SEAT 107 

venient egress, to make use of which, with a 
Httle skill and prudence, is a less hazardous 
experiment than it looks. A horse will take 
good care not to graze his own skin, and the 
space that admits of clearing his hips is wide 
enough for his rider's leg as well, if he hangs it 
over the animal's shoulder just where its neck 
is set on to the withers. But I would caution 
him to adopt this attitude carefully, and, above 
all, in good time. He should take his foot out 
of the stirrup and make his preparatory arrange- 
ments some three or four strides off at least, so 
as to accommodate his change of seat to the 
horse's canter before rising at the leap, and if 
he can spare his hand nearest the tree, so as to 
" fend it off" a little at the same time, he will 
be surprised to find how safely and pleasantly 
he accomplished a transit through some awkward 
and dangerous fence. 

But he must beware of delaying this little 
manoeuvre till the last moment, when his horse 
is about to spring. It is then too late, and he 
will either find himself so thrown out of his seat 
as to lose balance and grip too, or will try to 
save his leg by shifting it back instead of 
forward, when much confusion, bad language, 
and perhaps a broken knee-pan will be the 
result. 

Amongst other advantages of the open saddle 
we must not forget that it is cheaper by twenty 



108 BIDING BECOLLEGTIONS 

shillings, and so sets off the shape of his fore- 
hand as to make a hunter look more valuable 
by twenty pounds. 

Nevertheless, it is still repudiated by some of 
our finest horsemen, who allege the sufficient 
reason that an inch or so of stuffing adds to 
their strength and security of seat. This, after 
all is, the sine qua noii, to which every article of 
equipment, even the important items of boots 
and breeches, should be subservient, and I may 
here remark that ease and freedom of dress are 
indispensable to a man who wishes to ride across 
a country not only in comfort, but in safety. I 
am convinced that tight, ill-fitting leathers may 
have broken bones to answer for. Many a good 
fellow comes down to breakfast, stiff of gait, as 
if he were clothed in buckram, and can we 
wonder that he is hurt when thus hampered and 
constrained, he falls stark and rigid, like a paste- 
board policeman in a pantomime. 

I have already protested against the solecism 
of saving yourself by the bridle. It is better, if 
you must have assistance, to follow the example 
of two or three notoriously fine riders and grasp 
the cantle of the saddle at the risk of breaking 
its tree. But in my humble opinion it is not 
well to be in the wrong even with Plato, and, 
notwithstanding these high authorities, we must 
consider such habits, however convenient on 
occasion, as errors in horsemanship. To a good 



SEAT 109 

rider the saddle ought to be a place of security 
as easy as an armchair. 

I have heard it asserted, usually by persons 
of lean and wiry frames, that with short legs 
and round thighs, it is impossible to acquire a 
firm seat on horseback; but in this, as in most 
matters of skill, I believe nature can be rendered 
obedient to education. Few men are so clumsily 
shaped but that they may learn to become strong 
and skilful riders if they Avill adopt a good 
system, and from the first resolve to sit in the 
right place ; this, I think, should be in the very 
middle of the saddle, while bending the small of 
the back inwards, so that the weight of the body 
rests on that part of a horse's spine immediately 
behind his withers, under which his fore feet are 
placed, and on which, it has been ascertained, 
he can bear the heaviest load. When the 
animal stands perfectly still, or when it is ex- 
tended at full speed, the most inexperienced 
horseman seems to fall naturally into the required 
position; but to preserve it, even through the 
regulated paces of the riding school demands 
constant effort and attention. The back-board 
is here, in my opinion, of great assistance to the 
beginner, as it forces him into an attitude that 
causes him to sit on the right part of his own 
person and his horse's back. It compels him 
also to carry his hands at a considerable distance 
off the horse's head, and thus entails also the 
desideratum of long reins. 



110 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

The shortest and surest way, however, of 
attaining a firm seat on horseback is, after all, 
to practise without stirrups on every available 
opportunity. Many a valuable lesson may be 
taken while riding to covert and nobody but the 
student be a bit the wiser. Thus to trot and 
canter along, for two or three miles on end is no 
bad training at the beginning of the season, and 
even an experienced horseman will be surprised 
to find how it gets him down in his saddle, and 
makes him feel as much at home there as he did 
in the previous March. 

The late Captain Percy Williams, as brilliant 
a rider over a country as ever cheered a hound, 
and to whom few professional jockeys would 
have cared to give five pounds on a race-course, 
assured me that he attributed to the above self- 
denying exercise that strength in the saddle 
which used to serve him so well from the 
distance home. When quartered at Hounslow 
with his regiment, the 9th Lancers, like other 
gay young light dragoons, he liked to spend all 
his available time in London. There were no 
railroads in those days, and the coaches did not 
always suit for time ; but he owned a sound, 
speedy, high-trotting hack, and on this "bone 
setter" he travelled backwards and forwards 
twelve miles of the great Bath Eoad, with 
military regularity, half as many times a week. 
He made it a rule to cross the stirrups over his 



SEAT 111 

horse's shoulders the moment he was off the 
stones at either end, only to be replaced when 
he reached his destination. In three months' 
time, he told me, he had gained more practical 
knowledge of horsemanship, and more muscular 
power below the waist, than in all the hunting, 
larking, and riding-school drill of the previous 
three years. 

Grace is, after all, but the result of repressed 
strength. The loose and easy seat that seems 
to sway so carelessly with every motion, can 
tighten itself by instinct to the compression of a 
vice, and the "prettiest rider," as they say in 
Ireland, is probably the one whom a kicker or 
buck-jumper would find the most difficult to 
dislodge. No doubt in the field, the ride, the 
parade, or the polo-ground a strong seat is the 
first of those many qualities that constitute 
good horsemanship. The real adept is not to 
be unseated by any catastrophe less conclusive 
than complete downfall of man and beast ; nay, 
even then he parts company without confusion, 
and it may be said of him as of "William of 
Deloraine," good at need in a like predicament — 

" Still sate the warrior, saddle fast, 
Till, stumbling in the mortal shock, 
Down went the steed, the girthing broke, 
Hurled in a heap lay man and horse." 

But I have a strong idea Sir William did not 
let his bridle go even then. 



CHAPTER VII 

VALOUB 

"He that would venture nothing must not get 
on horseback," says a Spanish proverb, and the 
same caution seems applicable to most manly 
amusements or pursuits. We cannot enter a 
boat, put on a pair of skates, take a gun in hand 
for covert shooting, or even run downstairs in a 
hurry without encountering risk ; but the amount 
of peril to which a horseman subjects himself 
seems proportioned inversely to the unconscious- 
ness of it he displays. 

"Where there is no fear there is no danger," 
though a somewhat reckless aphorism, is more 
applicable, I think, to the exercise of riding than 
to any other venture of neck and limbs. The 
horse is an animal of exceedingly nervous 
temperament, sympathetic too, in the highest 
degree, with the hand from which he takes his 
instructions. Its slightest vacillation affects 
him with electric rapidity, but from its steadiness 



VALOUB 113 

he derives moral encouragement rather than 
physical support, and on those rare occasions 
when his own is insufficient, he seems to borrow 
daring and resolution from his rider. 

If the man's heart is in the right place, his 
horse will seldom fail him ; and were we asked 
to name the one essential without which it is 
impossible to attain thorough proficiency in 
the saddle, we should not hesitate to say 
nerve. 

Nerve, I repeat, in contradistinction to pluck. 
The latter takes us into a difficulty, the former 
brings us out of it. Both are comprised in the 
noble quality we call emphatically valour, but 
while the one is a brilliant and imposing 
costume, so is the other an honest wear-and- 
tear fabric, equally fit for all weathers, fine and 
foul. 

"You shiver, Colonel — you are afraid," said 
an insubordinate Major, who ought to have been 
put under arrest then and there, to his com- 
manding officer on the field of Prestonpans. 
" I am afraid, sir," answered the Colonel ; " and 
if you were as much afraid as I am, 7joic ivoidd 
run aivay ! " 

I have often thought this improbable anecdote 
exemplifies very clearly that most meritorious of 
all courage which asserts the dominion of our 
will over our senses. The Colonel's answer 
proves he was full of valour. He had lots of 

8 



114 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

pluck, but, as he was bold enough to admit, a 
deficiency of nerve. 

Now the field of Diana happily requires but a 
slight percentage of daring and resolution com- 
pared with the field of Mars. I heard the late 
Sir Francis Head, distinguished as a soldier, a 
statesman, an author, and a sportsman, put the 
matter in a few words, very tersely — and ex- 
ceedingly to the point. "Under fire," said he, 
"there is a guinea's-worth of danger, but it 
comes to you. In the hunting-field, there is 
only three-ha'p'orth, but you go to it T' In 
both cases, the courage required is a mere 
question of degree, and as in war, so in the 
chase, he is most likely to distinguish himself 
whose daring, not to be dismayed, is tempered 
with coolness, whose heart is always stout and 
hopeful, while he never loses his head. 

Now as I understand the terms pluck and 
nerve, I conceive the first to be a moral quality, 
the result of education, sentiment, self-respect, 
and certain high aspirations of the intellect; 
the second, a gift of nature dependent on the 
health, the circulation, and the liver. As 
memory to imagination in the student, so is 
nerve to pluck in the horseman. Not the more 
brilliant quality, nor the more captivating, but 
sound, lasting, available for all emergencies, and 
sure to conquer in the long run. 

We will suppose two sportsmen are crossing 



VALOUR 115 

a country equally well mounted, and each full 
of valour to the brim. A, to quote his admiring 
friends, "has the pluck of the devil!" B, to 
use a favourite expression of the saddle-room, 
"has a good nerve." Both are bound to come 
to grief over some forbidding rails at a corner, 
the only way out, in the line hounds are running, 
and neither has any more idea of declining than 
had poor Lord Strathmore on a similar occasion 
when Jem Mason halloaed to him, "Eternal 
misery on this side my lord, and certain death 
on the other!" So they harden their hearts, 
sit down in their saddles, and this is what 
happens : — 

A's horse, injudiciously sent at the obstacle, 
because it is awkward, a turn too fast, slips in 
taking off, and strikes the top-rail, which neither 
bends nor breaks, just below its knees. A flurried 
snatch at the bridle pulls its head in the air, 
and throws the animal skilfully to the ground 
at the moment it most requires perfect freedom 
for a desperate effort to keep on its legs. Eider 
and horse roll over in an "imperial crowner," 
and rise to their feet looking wildly about them, 
totally disconnected, and five or six yards apart. 

This is not encouraging for B, who is obliged 
to follow, inasmuch as the place only offers 
room for one at a time, but as soon as his leader 
is out of the way, he comes steadily and quietly 
at the leap. His horse, too, slips in the tracks 



116 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

of its fallen comrade, but as it is going in a 
more collected form, it contrives to get its fore- 
legs over the impediment, which catches it, 
however, inside the hocks, so that, balancing for 
a moment, it comes heavily on its nose. Dm-ing 
these evolutions, B sits motionless in the saddle, 
giving the animal complete liberty of rein. An 
instinct of self-preservation and a good pair of 
shoulders turn the scale at the last moment, and 
although there is no denying they "had a squeak 
for it " in the scramble, B and his horse come 
off without a fall. 

Nov/ it was pluck that took both these riders 
into the difficulty, but nerve that extricated one 
of them without defeat. 

I am not old enough to have seen the famous 
Mr. Assheton Smith in the hunting-field, but 
many of my early Leicestershire friends could 
remember him perfectly at his best, when he 
hunted that fine and formidable country, with 
the avowed determination, daily carried out, of 
going into every field with Jiis hounds ! 

The expenditure of valour, for it really deserves 
the name, necessary to carry out such a style 
of riding can only be appreciated by those who 
have tried to keep in a good place during thirty 
or forty minutes, over any part of the Quorn and 
Cottesmore counties lying within six miles of 
Billesdon. Where should we be but for the 
gates? I think I may answer, neither there 



VALOUB 117 

nor thereabouts ! I have reason to beheve the 
many stories told of " Tom Smith's" skill and 
daring are little, if at all, exaggerated. He 
seems admitted by all to have been the boldest, 
as he was one of the best, horsemen that ever 
got into a saddle with a hunting-whip in his 
hand. 

Though subsequently a man of enormous 
wealth, in the prime of life, he lived on the 
allowance, adequate but not extravagant, made 
him by his father, and did by no means give 
those high prices for horses, which, on the 
principle that "money makes the mare to go," are 
believed by many sportsmen to ensure a place in 
the front rank. He entertained no fancies as to 
size, action, above all, peculiarities in mouths 
and tempers. Little or big, sulky, violent, or 
restive, if a horse could gallop and jump, he was a 
hunter the moment he found himself between 
the legs of Tom Smith. 

There is a namesake of his hunting at present 
from Melton, who seems to have taken several 
leaves out of his book. Captain Arthur Smith, 
with every advantage of weight, nerve, skill, 
seat, and hand, is never away from the hounds. 
Moreover, he always likes his horse, and his 
horse always seems to like him. This gentle- 
man, too, is blessed with an imperturbable 
temper, which I have been given to understand 
the squire of Tedworth was not. 



118 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

Instances of Tom Smith's daring are endless. 
How characteristic was his request to a farmer 
near Glengorse, that he would construct such a 
fence as should effectually prevent the field from 
getting away in too close proximity to his 
hounds. " I can make you a stopper," said the 
good-natured j^eoman, " and welcome ; but what 
be you to do yourself, Squire, for I know 3'ou like 
well to be with 'em when they run ? " 

''Never mind me," was the answer, " you do 
what I ask you. I never saw a fence in this 
country I couldn't get over with a fall!'' and, 
sure enough, the first day the hounds found a 
fox in that well-known covert, Tom Smith was 
seen striding along in the wake of his darlings, 
having tumbled neck-and-crop over the obstacle 
he had demanded, in perfect good humour and 
content. 

If valour, then, is a combination of pluck and 
nerve, he may be called the most valorous sports- 
man that ever got upon a horse, while affording 
another example of the partiality with which 
fortune favours the bold, for although he has had 
between eighty and ninety falls in a season, he 
was never really hurt, I believe, but once in his 
life. 

" That is a hrave man ! " I have heard Lord 
Gardner say in good-humoured derision, pointing 
to some adventurous sportsman, whose daring so 
far exceeded his dexterity as to bring horse and 



VALOUB 119 

rider into trouble ; but his lordship's own nerve 
was so undeniable, that like many others, he 
may have undervalued a quality of which he 
could not comprehend the want. 

Most hunting-men, I fancy, will agree with 
me, that of all obstacles we meet with in crossing 
a country, timber draws most largely on the 
reserve fund of courage hoarded away in that 
part of a hero's heart which is nearest his 
mouth. The highest rails I ever saw attempted 
were ridden at by Lord Gardner some years ago, 
while out with Mr. Tailby's hounds near the 
Eam's Head. With a fair holding scent, and 
the pack bustling their fox along over the grass, 
there was no time for measurement, but I 
remember perfectly well that being in the same 
field, some fifty yards behind him, and casting 
longing looks at the fence, totally impracticable 
in every part, I felt satisfied the corner he made 
for was simply an impossibility. 

' ' We had better turn round and go home ! " I 
muttered in my despair. 

The leap consisted of four strong rails, higher 
than a horse's withers, an approach down hill, a 
take-off poached by cattle, and a landing into a 
deep muddy lane. I can recall at this moment, 
the beautiful style in which my leader brought 
his horse to its effort. Very strong in the saddle, 
with the finest hands in the world, leaning far 
back, and sitting well down, he seemed to rouse 



120 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

as it were, and concentrate the energies of the 
animal for its last half-stride, when, rearing 
itself almost perpendicularly, it contrived to 
get safe over, only breaking the top rail with a 
hind leg. 

This must have lowered the leap by at least a 
foot, yet when I came to it, thus reduced, and 
" made easy," it was still a formidable obstacle, 
and I felt thankful to be on a good jumper. 

Of late years I have seen Mr. Powell, who is 
usually very well mounted, ride over exceedingly 
high and forbidding timber so persistently, as to 
have earned from that material, the 7/0?;^ de 
chasse by which ^he is known amongst his friends. 

But perhaps the late Lord Cardigan, the last 
of the Brudenells, afforded in the hunting-field, 
as in all other scenes of life, the most striking 
example of that "pluck" which is totally in- 
dependent of youth, health, strength, or any 
other physical advantage. The courage that 
in advanced middle-age governed the steady 
manoeuvres of Bulganak, and led the death-ride 
at Balaclava, burned bright and fierce to the end. 
The graceful seat might be less firm, the tall 
soldier-like figure less upright, but Mars, one of 
his last and best hunters, was urged to charge 
wood and water by the same bold heart at 
seventy, that tumbled Langar into the Upping- 
ham road over the highest gate in Leicestershire 
at twenty-six. The foundation of Lord Car- 



VALOUE 121 

digan's whole character was valour. He loved 
it, ho prized it, he admired it in others, he was 
conscious and proud of it in himself. 

So jealous was he of this chivalrous quality, 
that even in such a matter of mere amusement 
as riding across a country, he seemed to attach 
some vague sense of disgrace to the avoidance 
of a leap, however dangerous, if hounds were 
running at the time, and was notorious for the 
recklessness with which he would plunge into 
the deepest rivers though he could not swim a 
stroke ! 

This I think is to court real danger for no 
sufficient object. 

Lord Wolverton, than whom no man has 
ridden straighter and more enthusiastically to 
hounds, ever since he left Oxford, once crossed 
the Thames in this most perilous fashion, for he, 
too, has never learnt to swim, during a run with 
''the Queen's." "But," said I, protesting sub- 
sequently against such hardihood, " you were 
risking your life at every stroke." 

"I never thought of that," was the answer, 
" till I got safe over, and it was no use bothering 
about it then." 

Lord Cardigan however, seemed well aware of 
his danger, and, in my own recollection, had two 
very narrow escapes from drowning in these un- 
called-for exploits. 

The gallant old cavalry officer's death was in 



122 BIDING BEGOLLECTIONS 

keeping with his whole career. At threescore 
years and ten he insisted on mounting a 
dangerous animal that he would not have per- 
mitted any friend to ride. What happened is still 
a mystery. The horse came home without him, 
and he never spoke again, though he lived till 
the following day. 

But these are sad reflections for so cheerful a 
subject as daring in the saddle. Eed is our 
colour, not black, and, happily, in the sport we 
love, there are few casualties calling forth more 
valour than is required to sustain a bloody nose, 
a broken collar-bone, or a sound ducking in a 
wet ditch. Yet it is extraordinary how many 
good fellows riding good horses find themselves 
defeated in a gallop after hounds, from indecision 
and uncertainty, rather than want of courage, 
when the emergency actually arises. Though the 
danger, according to Sir Francis Head, is about 
a ha'p'orth, it might possibly be valued at a 
penny, and nobody wants to discover, in his own 
person, the exact amount. Therefore are the 
chivalry of the Midland Counties to be seen on 
occasion panicstricken at the downfall or dis- 
appearance of a leader. And a dozen feet of 
dirty water will wholly scatter a field of horse- 
men who would confront an enemy's fire without 
the quiver of an eye-lash. Except timber, of 
which the risk is obvious, at a glance, nothing 
frightens the Jialf -Imrd, so much as a brook. It 



VALOUB 123 

is difficult, yon see, to please them, the uncer- 
tainty of the limpid impediment being little less 
forbidding than the certainty of the sti:ff ! 

But it does require dash and coolness, pluck 
and nerve, a certain spice of something that may 
fairly be called valour, to charge cheerfully at a 
brook when we have no means of ascertaining its 
width, its depth, or the soundness of its banks. 
Horses too are apt to share the misgivings of 
their riders, and water-jumping, like a loan to a 
poor relation, if not done freely, had better not 
be done at all. 

The fox, and consequently the hounds, as we 
know, will usually cross at the narrowest place, 
but even if we can mark the exact spot, fences, 
or the nature of the ground may prevent our 
getting there. What are we to do ? If we 
follow a leader, and he drops short, we are 
irretrievably defeated, if we make our own 
selection, the gulf may be as wide as the 
Thames. " Send him at it !" says valour, "and 
take 3^our chance!" Perhaps it is the best plan 
after all. There is something in luck, a good 
deal in the reach of a horse's stride at a gallop, 
and if we do get over, we rather flatter ourselves 
for the next mile or two that we have "done the 
trick!" 

To enter on the subject of " hard riding," as 
it is called, without honourable mention of the 
habit and the side-saddle, would in these days 



124 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

betray both want of observation and politeness ; 
but ladies, though they seem to court danger no 
less freely than admiration, possess, I think, as 
a general rule, more pluck than nerve. I can 
recall an instance very lately, however, in which I 
saw displayed by one of the gentlest of her sex, an 
amount of courage, coolness, and self-possession, 
that would have done credit to a hero. This 
lady, who had not quite succeeded in clearing a 
high post-and-rail with a boggy ditch on the 
landing side, was down and under her horse. 
The animal's whole weight rested on her legs, 
so as to keep her in such a position, that her 
head lay between its fore and hind feet, where 
the least attempt at a struggle, hemmed in by 
those four shining shoes, must have dashed her 
brains out. She seemed in no way concerned 
for her beauty, or her life, but gave judicious 
directions to those who rescued her as calmly 
and courteously as if she had been pouring out 
their tea. 

The horse, though in that there is nothing 
unusual, behaved like an angel, and the fair 
rider was extricated without very serious injury ; 
but I thought to myself, as I remounted and rode 
on, that if a legion of Amazons could be rendered 
amenable to discipline they would conquer the 
world. 

No man, till he has tried the experiment, can 
conceive how awkward and powerless one feels 



VALOUB 125 

in a lady's seat. They themselves affirm that 
with the crutch, or second pommel on the near 
side, they are more secure than ourselves ; but 
when I see those delicate, fragile forms flying 
over wood and water, poised on precipitous 
banks, above all, crashing through strong bull- 
finches, I am struck with admiration at the 
mysteries of nature, among which not the least 
wonderful seems the feminine desire to excel. 
And they do excel when resolved they will, even 
in those sports and exercises which seem more 
naturally belonging to the masculine department. 
It was but the other day, a boatman in the 
Channel told me he saw a lady swimming alone 
more than half a mile off shore. Now that the 
universal rink has brought skating into fashion, 
the "many-twinkling feet," that smoothest glide 
and turn most deftly, are shod with such 
dainty boots as never could be worn by the 
clumsier sex. At lawn-tennis the winning 
service is offered by some seductive hoyden in 
her teens ; and, although in the game of cricket 
the Graces have as yet been males, at no distant 
day we may expect to see the best batsman at 
the Oval bowled out, or perhaps caught by a 
woman ! 

Yes, the race is in the ascendant. It takes 
the heaviest fish, — I mean real fish — with a rod 
and line. It kills its grouse right and left — in 
the moor among the heather. It shoulders a 



126 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

rijEle no heavier than a pea-shooter, but levels 
the toy so straight that, after some cunning 
stalk, a "stag of ten" goes down before the 
white hand and taper linger, as becomes his 
antlers and his sex. Lastly, when it gets upon 
Bachelor, or Benedict, or Othello, or any other 
high-flyer with a suggestive name, it sails away 
close, often too close, to the hounds, leaving 
brothers, husbands, even admirers hopelessly in 
the rear. 

Now, I hope I am not going to express a senti- 
ment that will offend their prejudices, and cause 
young women to call me an old one, but I do 
consider that in these days, ladies who go out 
hunting ride a turn too hard. Far be it from me 
to assert that the Field is no place for the fair ; 
on the contrary, I hold that their presence adds 
in every respect to its chance. Neither would I 
protest against their jumping, and relegate them 
to the bridle-roads or lanes. Nothing of the 
kind. Let the greatest care be taken in the 
selection of their horses ; let their saddles and 
bridles be fitted to such a nicety that sore backs 
and sore mouths are equally impossible, and let 
trustworthy servants be told off to attend them 
during the day. Then, with everything in their 
favour, over a fair country, fairly fenced, why 
should they not ride on and take their pleasure ? 

But even if their souls disdain to follow a 
regular pilot (and I may observe his office 



VALOUB 127 

requires no little nerve, as they are pretty quick 
on to a leader if he gets down), I would entreat 
them not to try " cutting out the work," as it is 
called, but rather to wait and see one rider, at 
least, over a leap before they attempt it them- 
selves. It is frightful to think of a woman 
landing in a pit, a water-course, or even so deep 
a ditch as may cause the horse to roll over her 
when he falls. With her less muscular frame 
she is more easily injured than a man ; with her 
finer organisation she cannot sustain injury as 
well. It turns one sick to think of her dainty 
head between a horse's hind-legs, or of those 
cruel pommels bruising her delicate ribs and 
bosom. It is at least twenty to one in our 
favour every time we fall, whereas with her the 
odds are all the other way, and it is almost 
twenty to one she must be hurt. 

What said the wisest of kings concerning a 
fair woman without discretion ? We want no 
Solomon to remind us that with her courage 
roused, her ambition excited, all the rivalry of 
her nature called into play, she has nowhere 
more need of this judicious quality than in the 
hunting-field. 



CHAPTER VIII 

DISCRETION 

It has been called the better part of valour, and 
doubtless, when wanting, the latter is as likely 
to sustain irretrievable reverses as a ship with- 
out a rudder, or a horse without a bridle. The 
two should always travel together ; but it 
appears to me that we meet the cautious 
brother most frequently on our journey through 
life. 

In the chase, however, they seem to share 
their presence impartially enough. Valour is 
very much to the front at the covert side, and 
shows again with great certainty after dinner ; 
but discretion becomes paramount and almost 
ubiquitous when the hounds run, being called on 
indeed to act for us in every field. Sometimes, 
particularly when countries are blind early in 
November, we abandon ourselves so entirely to 
its guidance as little by little to lose all our self- 

128 



DISOBETION 129 

reliance, till at last we feel comfortable nowhere 
but in the high road; and most of us, I dare say, 
can recall occasions on which we have been so 
utterly discomfited by an early disappointment 
(in plain English a fence we were afraid to jump) 
as to give in without an effort, although the 
slightest dash of valour at the right moment 
would have carried us triumphantly out of 
defeat. 

Never mind. Like a French friend of mine, 
who expresses his disinclination to our chasse 
an rejiard by protesting, ^^ Monsieur, je ne 
cherche pas mes emotions a me casser le cou,'" 
when we are avowedly in pursuit of pleasure we 
ought to take it exactly as suits us best. There 
are two ends of the string in every run with 
hounds. Wisdom pervades each of these, but 
eschews the various gradations between. In 
front rides valour with discretion ; in rear, dis- 
cretion without valour ; and in the middle a 
tumultuous throng, amongst whom neither 
quality is to be recognised. With too little of 
the one to fly, not enough of the other to creep, 
they waver at the fences, hurry at the gaps, get 
in each other's way at the gates, and altogether 
make exceedingly slow progress compared to 
their efforts and their excitement. 

Valour without discretion, I had almost for- 
gotten to observe, was down and under his horse 
at the first difficulty. 

9 



130 BIDING EECOLLECTIONS 

We will let the apex of the pyramid alone for 
the present, taking the safest and broadest end 
of the hunt first. 

If, then, you have achieved so bad a start that 
it is impossible to make up your lee-way, or if 
you are on a hack with neither power or inten- 
tion to ride in the front rank, be sure you 
cannot take matters too coolly should you wish 
to command the line of chase and see as much 
as possible of the fun. 

I am supposing the hounds have found a good 
fox that knows more than one parish, and are 
running him with a holding scent. However 
favourable your start, and fate is sure to arrange 
a good one for a man too badly mounted to avail 
himself of it, let nothing induce you to keep 
near the pack. At a mile off you can survey 
and anticipate their general direction, at a 
quarter that distance you must ride every turn. 
Do not be disordered by the brilliancy of the 
pace should their fox go straight up wind. If 
he does not sink it within five minutes he means 
reaching a drain, and another five will bring the 
"who-whoop!" that marks him to ground. 
This is an unfailing deduction, but happily the 
most discreet of us are apt to forget it. Time 
after time we are so fooled by the excitement of 
our gallop that even experience does not make 
us wise, and we enjoy the scurry, exclaiming, 
"What a pity! " when it is over, as if we had 



DISCBETION 131 

never been out hunting before. It would be 
useless to distress your hack for so short a spin, 
rather keep wide of the line, if possible, on high 
ground, and calculate by the wind, the coverts, 
and the general aspect of the country, where a 
fox is most likely to make his point. 

I have known good runs in the Shires seen 
fairly, from end to end, by a lady in a 
wagonette. 

When business really begins, men are apt to 
express in various ways their intention of taking 
part. Some use their eyes, some their heels, 
and some their flasks. Do you trust your 
brains, they will stand you in better stead than 
spurs, or spectacles, or even brandy diluted with 
curagoa. Keep your attention fixed on the 
chase, V\^atch the pack as long as you can, and 
when those white specks have vanished into 
space, depend on your own skill in woodcraft 
and knowledge of country to bring you up with 
them again. 

Above all, while they are actually in motion, 
distrust the bobbing hats and spots of scarlet 
that you mark in a distant cluster behind the 
hedge. What are they but the field ? and the 
field, if it is really a run, are pretty sure to be 
out of it. 

The first flight you will find very difficult to 
keep in view. At the most it consists of six or 
seven horsemen riding fifty or a hundred yards 



132 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

apart, and even its followers become so scattered 
and detached that in anything like an undu- 
lating country they are completely hidden from 
observation. If you do catch a glimpse of them, 
how slow they seem to travel ! and yet, when 
you nick in presently, heaving flanks, red faces, 
and excited voices will tell a very different tale. 

Trotting soberly along, then, with ears and 
eyes wide open, carefully keeping down wind, 
not only because the hounds are sure to bend in 
that direction, but also that you can thus hear 
before you see them, and take measures accord- 
ingly, you will have ridden very few miles before 
you are gladdened by the cheerful music of the 
pack, or more probably a twang from the horn. 
The scent is rarely so good as to admit of 
hounds running for thirty or forty minutes with- 
out a check ; indeed, on most days they are 
likely to be at fault more than once during the 
lapse of half an hour, when the huntsman's 
science will be required to cast them, and, in 
some cases, to assist them in losing their fox. 
Now is your time to press on with the still 
undefeated hack. If you are wise you will not 
leave the lanes to which I give you the credit of 
having stuck religiously from the start. At 
least, do not think of entering a field unless the 
track of an obvious bridle-road leads safely into 
the next. 

A man who never jumps at all can by no 



DISGEETION 133 

possibility be "pounded," whereas the easiest 
and safest of gaps into an inclosure may mean a 
bullfinch with two ditches at the other end. 

Perhaps you will find yourself ahead of every 
one as the hounds spread, and stoop and dash 
forward with a whimper that makes the sweetest 
of music in your ears. Perhaps, as they swarm 
across the very lane in which you are standing, 
discretion may calmly open the gate for valour, 
who curses him in his heart, wondering what 
business he has to be there at all. 

There is jealousy even in the hunting-field, 
though we prefer to call it keenness, emulation, 
a fancy for riding our own line, and I fear that 
with most of us, in spite of the kindly sym- 
pathies and joyous expansion of the chase, " e^o 
et prceterea nihil " is the unit about which our 
aspirations chiefly revolve. 

" What is the use ? " I once heard a plaintive 
voice lamenting behind a blackthorn, while the 
hounds were baying over a drain at the finish of 
a clipping thirty minutes on the grass. " I've 
spoilt my hat, I've torn my coat, I've lamed my 
horse, I've had two falls, I went first, I'll take 
my oath, from end to end, and there's that 
d — d fellow on the coffee-coloured pony gets 
here before me after all ! " 

There are times, no doubt, when valour must 
needs yield the palm to discretion. 

Let us sec how this last respectable quality 



134 BIDING BECOLLEOTIONS 

serves us at the other and nobler extremity of 
the hunt, for it is there, after all, that our 
ambition points, and our wishes chiefly tend. 

"Are you a hard rider?" asked an inquiring 
lady of Mr. Jorrocks. 

"The hardest in England," answered that 
facetious worthy, adding to himself, "I may say 
that, for I never goes off the 'ard road if I can 
help it." 

Now instead of following so cautious an 
example, let us rather cast overboard a super- 
fluity of discretion, that would debar us the post 
of honour we are fain to occupy, retaining only 
such a leavening of its virtue as will steer us 
safely between the two extremes. While the 
hounds are racing before us, with a good scent, 
in an open country, let our gallant hunter be 
freely urged by valour to the front, while at the 
same time, discretion holds him hard by the 
head, lest a too inconsiderate daring should 
endanger his rider's neck. 

If a man has the luck to be on a good timber- 
jumper, now is the time to take advantage freely 
of its confidential resources. If not pulled about, 
and interfered with, a hunter that understands 
his business leaps this kind of fence, so long as 
he is fresh, with ease to himself and security to 
his rider. He sees exactly what he has to do, 
and need not rise an inch higher, nor fling him- 
self an inch farther than is absolutely necessary, 



DISCBETION 135 

whereas a hedge induces him to make such 
exertions as may cover the uncertainty it con- 
ceals. But, on the other hand, the binder will 
usually bear tampering with, which the bar will 
not, therefore if your own courage and your 
horse's skill tempt you to negotiate rails, stiles, 
or even a gate — and this last is ver?/ good form 
— sound discretion warns you to select the first 
ten or fifteen minutes of a run for such exhi- 
bitions, but to avoid them religiously when the 
deep ground and the pace have begun to tell. 

Assheton Smith himself, though he scouted 
the idea of ever turning from anything, had in 
so far the instinct of self-preservation, that when 
he thought his horse likely to faH over such an 
obstacle, lie put him at it somewhat aslant, so 
that the animal should get at least one foreleg 
clear, and tumble on to its side, when this 
accomplished rider was pretty sure to rise 
unhurt with the reins in his hand. 

Now this diagonal style of jumping, judiciously 
practised, is not without its advantages at less 
dangerous fences than the uncompromising bit 
of timber that turns us over. It necessarily 
increases the width of a bank, affording the 
horse more room for foothold, as it decreases the 
height and strength of the growers, by taking 
them the way they lie, and may, on occasion, 
save a good hunter from a broken back, the 
penalty for dropping both hind legs simul- 



136 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

taneously and perpendicularly into some steep 
cut ditch he has failed to cover in his stride. 

Discretion, you observe, should accompany 
the hardest riders, and is not to he laid aside 
even in the confusion and excitement of a fall. 

This must prove a frequent casualty with 
every man, however well mounted, if the hounds 
show sport and he means to be with them while 
they run. It seems a paradox, but the oftener 
you are down, the less likely you are to be hurt. 
Practice soon teaches you to preserve presence 
of mind, or, as I may be allowed to call it, dis- 
cretion, and when you know exactly where your 
horse is, you can get away from him before he 
crushes you with the weight of his body. A 
foot or a hand thrust out at the happy moment, 
is enough to "fend you off," and your own 
person seldom comes to the ground with such 
force as to do you any harm, if there is plenty of 
dirt. In the absence of that essential to sport, 
hunters are not distressed, and therefore do not 
often fall. 

If, however, you have undertaken to temper 
the rashness of a young one with your own dis- 
cretion, you must expect occasional reverses ; 
but even thus, there are many chances in your 
favour, not the least of which is your pupil's 
elasticity. Lithe and agile, he will make such 
gallant efforts to save himself as usually obviate 
the worst consequences of his mistake. The 



DISCBETION 137 

worn-out, the under-bred, or the distressed horse 
comes down Hke a lump of lead, and neither 
valour nor discretion are much help to us 
then. 

From the pace at which hounds cross a 
country, there is unfortunately no time to 
practise that most discreet manoeuvre called 
"leadino: over," when the fence is of so formid- 
able a nature as to threaten certain discomfiture, 
yet I have seen a few tall, powerful, active men, 
spring off and on their horses with such rapidity 
as to perform this feat successfully in all the 
hurry of a burst. The late Colonel Y/yndham, 
who, when he commanded the Greys, in which 
regiment he served at Waterloo, was said by 
George the Fourth to be the handsomest man in 
the army, possessed with a giant's stature the 
pliant agility of a harlequin. A finer rider never 
got into a saddle. Weighing nineteen stone, I 
have seen him in a burst across Leicestershire, 
go for twenty minutes with the best of the light- 
weights, occasionally relieving his horse by 
throwing himself off, leaping a fence alongside 
of it, and vaulting on again, without checking 
the animal sufficiently to break its stride. 

The lamented Lord Mayo too, whose tall 
stalwart frame was in keeping with those intel- 
lectual powers that India still recalls in melan- 
choly pride, was accustomed, on occasion, thus 
to surmount an obstacle, no less successfully 



138 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

among the bullfinches of Northamptonshire than 
the banks and ditches of Kildare. Perhaps the 
best rider of his family, and it is a bold assertion, 
for when five or six of the brothers are out hunt- 
ing, there will always be that number of tall 
heavy men, answering to the name of Bourke in 
the same field with the hounds, Lord Mayo, or 
rather Lord Naas (for the best of his sporting 
career closed with his succession to the earl- 
dom), was no less distinguished for his daring 
horsemanship than his tact in managing a 
country, and his skill in hunting a pack of 
hounds. That he showed less forethought in 
risking a valuable life than in conducting the 
government of an empire, we must attribute to 
his personal courage and keen delight in the 
chase, but that he humorously deplored the 
scarcity of discretion amongst its votaries, the 
following anecdote, as I had it from himself, 
sufficiently attests. 

While he hunted his own hounds in Kildare, 
his most constant attendant, though on foot, 
was a nondescript character, such as is called 
" a tight boy " in L'eland, and nowhere else, 
belonging to a class that never seem to do a 
day's work, nor to eat a plentiful meal, but are 
always pleasant, obliging, idle, hungry, thirsty, 
and supremely happy. Eunning ten miles on 
foot to covert, Mick, as he was called, would 
never leave the hounds till they reached their 



DISCRETION 139 

kennels at night. Thus, plodding home one 
evening by his lordship's horse, after an 
unusually long and fatiguing run, the rider 
could not help expostulating with the walker 
on such a perverse misapplication of strength, 
energy, and perseverance. "Why, look at the 
work you have been doing," said his lordship ; 
"with a quarter of the labour you might have 
earned three or four shillings at the least. 
What a fool you must be, Mick, to neglect your 
business, and lose half your potatoes, that you 
may come out with my hounds ! " 

Mick reflected a moment, and looked up, 
" All ! me lard," replied he, with such a glance 
of fun as twinkles nowhere but in the Irish blue 
of an Irish eye, "it's truth your lardship's spakin' 
this night; 'av there was no fools, there'd be sorra 
feiu fox-hunters 1 " 

Let us return to the question of Discretion, 
and how we are to combine it with an amuse- 
ment that makes fools of us all. 

While valour, then, bids us take our fences 
as they come, discretion teaches us that each 
should be accomplished in the manner most 
suitable to its peculiar requirements. When a 
bank offers foothold, and we see the possibility 
of dividing a large leap by two, we should pull 
back to a trot, and give our horse a hint that he 
will do well to spring on and off the obstacle in 
accordance with a motion of our hand. If, on 



140 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

the contrary, his effort must be made at a black 
and forbidding bullfinch, with the chance of a 
wide ditch, or even a tough ashen rail, beyond, 
it is wise, should we mean having it at all, to 
catch hold of the bridle and increase our pace, 
for the last two or three strides, with such 
energy as shall shoot us through the thorns 
like a harlequin through a trap-door, leaving 
the orifice to close up behind, with no more 
traces of our transit than are left by a bird ! 

Perhaps we find an easy place under a tree, 
with an overhanging branch, and sidle daintily 
up to it, bending the body and lowering the 
head as we creep through, to the admiration 
of an indiscreet friend on a rash horse who 
spoils a good hat and utters an evil execration 
while trying to follow our example. Or it may 
be, rejoicing to find ourselves on arable land, 
that actually rides light, and yet carries a 
scent, 

" Solid and tall, 
The rasping wall " 

challenges us a quarter of a mile off to face it 
or go home, for it offers neither gate or gap, 
and seems to meet the sky-line on either side. 
I do not know whether others are open to the 
same deception, but to my own 63^6, a wall 
appears more, and a hedge less, than its real 
height at a certain distance off. The former. 



DISCBETION 141 

however, is a most satisfactory leap when skil- 
fully accomplished, and not half so arduous as 
it looks. 

"Have it!" says Valour. "Yes, but very 
slow," replies Discretion. And, sure enough, 
we calm the free generous horse into a trot, 
causing him to put his very nose over the 
obstacle before taking off ; when bucking into 
the air, like a deer, he leaves it behind him 
with little more effort than a girl puts to her 
skipping-rope. The height an experienced wall- 
jumper will clear seems scarcely credible. A 
fence of this description, which measurement 
proves to be fully six feet, was jumped by the 
well-known Colonel Miles three or four years ago 
in the Badminton country without displacing 
a stone, and although the rider's consummate 
horsemanship afforded every chance of success, 
great credit is due to the good hunter that 
could make such an effort with so heavy a 
man on its back. 

The knack of wall- jumping, however, is soon 
learned even by the most inexperienced animals, 
and I may here observe that I have often been 
surprised at the discretion shown by young- 
horses, when ridden close to hounds, in nego- 
tiating fences requiring sagacity and common 
sense. I am av/are that my opinion is singular, 
and I only give it as the result, perhaps excep- 
tional, of my own limited experience ; but I 



142 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

must admit that I have been carried by a 
pupil, on his first day, over awkward places, 
up and down banks, in and out of ravines, or 
under trees, with a docility and circumspec- 
tion I have looked for from the veterans in 
vain. Perhaps the old horse knows me as well 
as I know him, and thinks also that he knows 
best. I am bound to say he never fails me 
when I trust him, but he likes his head let 
alone, and insists on having it all his own way. 
When his blood is really up, and the hero of a 
hundred fights considers it worth while to put 
forth his strength, I am persuaded he is even 
bolder than his junior. 

Not only at the fences, however, do we require 
discretion. There is a right way and a wrong 
of traversing every acre of ground that lies 
between them. On the grass, we must avoid 
crossing high ridge-and-furrow in a direct line ; 
rather let us take it obliquely, or, if the field 
be not too large, go all the way round by the 
headland. For an unaccustomed horse there 
is nothing so trying as those up-and-down 
efforts, that resemble the lurches of a boat in 
a heavy sea. A very true-shaped animal will 
learn to glide smoothly over them after a season 
or two, but these inequalities of surface must 
always be a tax on wind and muscular powers at 
best. The easiest goer in ridge-and-furrow that 
we have yet seen is a fox. Surely no other 



DISCBETION 143 

quadruped has nature gifted with so much 
strength and symmetry in so small a com- 
pass. 

Amongst the ploughs, though the fences are 
happily easier, forethought and consideration 
are even more required for the ground. After 
much rain, do not enter a turnip-field if you can 
help it, the large, frequent roots loosen the soil, 
and your horse will go in up to his hocks; young 
wheat also it is well to avoid, if only for reasons 
purely selfish; but on the fallows, when you find 
a wet furrow, lying the right way, put on steam, 
splash boldly ahead, and never leave it so long 
as it serves you in your line. The same may be 
said of a foot-path, even though its guidance 
should entail the jumping of half-a-dozen stiles. 
Sound foothold reduces the size of any leap, and 
while you are travelling easily above the ground, 
the rest of the chase, fox and hounds too, as 
well as horses, though in a less degree, are 
labouring through the mire. 

When your course is intersected by narrow 
water-cuts, for purposes of irrigation, by covered 
drains, or deep, grass-grown cart-ruts, it will be 
well to traverse them obliquely, so that, if they 
catch the stride of his gallop, your horse may 
only get one foot in at a time. He will then 
right himself with a flounder, whereas, if held 
by both legs, either before or behind, the result 
is a ratthng fall, very dangerous to his back 



144 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

in the one case, and to your own neck in the 
other. 

Valour of course insists that a hunter should 
do what he is hid, but there are some situations 
in which the beast's discretion pleads reasonably 
enough for some forbearance from its master. 
If a good horse, thoroughly experienced in the 
exigencies of the sport, that you have ridden a 
season or two, and flatter yourself you under- 
stand, persistently refuses a fence, depend upon 
it there is sufficient reason. The animal may 
be lame from an injury just received, may have 
displaced a joint, broken a tendon, or even 
ruptured an artery. Perhaps it is so blown as 
to feel it must fall in the effort you require. At 
any rate do not persevere. Horses have been 
killed, and men also, through a sentiment of 
sheer obstinacy that would not be denied, and 
humanity should at least think shame to be 
out-done in discretion by the brute. A horse 
is a wise creature enough, or he could never 
carry us pleasantly to hounds. An old friend 
of mine used to say : " People talk about size 
and shape, shoulders, quarters, blood, bone, and 
muscle, but for my part, give me a hunter with 
brains. He has to take care of the biggest fool 
of the two, and think for both ! " 

Discretion, then, is one of the most valuable 
qualities for an animal charged with such heavy 
responsibilities, that bears us happy and tri- 



DISCEETION 145 

umphant during the day, and brings ns safe 
home at night. Who would grudge a journey 
across St. George's Channel to find this desirable 
quality in its highest perfection at Ballinasloe 
or Cahirmee ? for indeed it is not too much to 
say that whatever we may think of her natives, 
the most discreet and sagacious of our hunters 
come over from the Emerald Isle. 



10 



CHAPTEE IX 

IBISH HUNTEBS 

"An' niver laid an iron to the sod!" was a 
metaphor I once heard used by an excellent 
fellow from Limerick, to convey the brilliant 
manner in which a certain four-year-old he was 
describing performed during a burst, when, his 
owner told me, he went clean away from all 
rivals in his gallop, and flew every wall, bank, 
and ditch, in his stride. 

The expression, translated into English, would 
seem to imply that he neither perched on the 
grass-grown banks, with all four feet at once, 
like a cat, nor struck back at them with his 
hind legs, like a dog; and perhaps my friend 
made the more account of this hazardous style 
of jumping, that it seemed so foreign to the 
usual characteristics of the Irish horse. 

Eor those who have never hunted in Ireland, 
I must explain that the country as a general 

146 



IBISH HUNTEBS 147 

rule is fenced on a primitive system, requiring 
little expenditure or capital beyond the labour 
of a man, or, as he is there called, " a boy " 
with a short pipe in his mouth and a spade in 
his hand. This light-hearted operative, gay, 
generous, reckless, high-spirited, and by no 
means a free worker, simply throws a bank up 
with the soil that he scoops out of the ditch, 
reversing the process, and filling the latter by 
levelling the former, when a passage is required 
for carts, or cattle, from one inclosure to the 
next. I ought nevertheless to observe, that 
many landlords, with a munificence for which 
I am at a loss to account, go to the expense of 
erecting massive pillars of stone, ostensibly 
gate-posts, at commanding points, between 
which supports, however, they seldom seem to 
hang a gate, though it is but justice to admit 
that when they do, the article is usually of 
iron, very high, very heavy, and fastened with 
a strong padlock, though its object seems less 
apparent, when we detect within convenient 
distance on either side a gap through which 
one might safely drive a gig. 

It is obvious, then, that this kind of fence, 
at its widest and deepest, requires considerable 
activity as well as circumspection on a horse's 
part, and forbearance in handling on that of a 
rider. The animal must gather itself to spring 
like a goat, on the crest of the eminence it has 



148 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

to surmount, with perfect liberty of lioad and 
neck, for the cliirib, and subsequent effort, that 
may, or may not be demanded. Neither man 
nor boast can foresee what is prepared for them 
on the binding side, and a clever Irish hunter 
brings itself up short in an instant, should the 
gulf be too formidable for its powers, balancing 
on tlie brink, to look for a better spot, or oven 
leaping hiick again into the field from which it 
came. 

That the Irishman rides with a light bridle 
and lets it very much alone is the necessary 
result. His pace at the fences must be slow, 
because it is not a horse's nature, however rash, 
to rush at a place like the side of a house ; and 
instinct prompts the animal to collect itself 
without restraint from a rider's hand, while 
any interference during the second and down- 
ward spring would only teiid to pull it back into 
the chasm it is doing its best to clear. 

The efforts by which an Irish hunter sur- 
mounts these national impediments is like that 
of a hound jum])ing a wall. The horse leaps to 
the top with fore-and-hind foot together, where 
it dwells, almost imperceptibly, while shifting 
the purchase, or, "changing," as the natives call 
it, in the shortest possible stride, of a few inches 
at most, to make the second spring. E^'cry good 
English hunter will strike back with his hind 
legs when surprised into sudden exertion, but 



IRISH IIUNTEIiS 149 

only a proficient bred, or at least, taught in 
the sister island, can master the feat described 
above in such artistic form as loads one to 
believe that, like Pegasus, the creature has 
wings at every heel. No man who has fol- 
lowed hounds in Meath, Kilkenny, or Kildare 
will ever forget tho first time, when, to use 
the vernacular of those delightful countries, 
he rode "an accomplished hunter over an 
intricate Icp ! " 

But the merit is not heaven-born. On the 
contrary, it seems the result of patient and 
judicious tuition, called by Irish breakers "train- 
ing," in which they show much knowledge of 
character and sound common sense. 

In some counties, such as Roscommon and 
Connemara, the brood mare indeed, with the foal 
at her foot, runs wild over extensive districts, and 
finding no gates against which to lean, leaps 
leisurely from pasture to pasture, pausing, 
perhaps, in her transit to crop the sweeter 
herbage from some bank on which she is perched. 
Where mamma goes her little one dutifully follows, 
imitating the maternal motions, and as a charm- 
ing mother almost always has a charming 
daughter, so, from its earliest foalhood, the 
future hunter acquires an activity, courage, and 
sagacity that shall hereafter become the ad- 
miration of crowded hunting fields in the land 
of the Saxon far, far away! 



150 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

But whereas in many parts of Ireland improved 
agriculture denies space for the unrestrained 
vagaries of these early lessons, a judicious system 
is adopted that substitutes artificial education 
for that of nature. "It is wonderful we don't 
get more falls," said one of the boldest and best 
of lady riders, who during many seasons followed 
the pilotage of Jem Mason, and but for failing 
eye-sight could sometimes have gone before him, 
"when we consider that we all ride half-broken 
horses," and, no doubt, on our side of the Channel, 
the observation contained a great deal of truth. 
But in this respect our neighbours show more 
wisdom. They seldom bring a pupil into the 
hunting-field till the elementary discipline has 
been gone through that teaches him when he 
comes to his fence tvJiat to do with it. He may 
be three, he may be four. I have seen a sports- 
man in Kilkenny so unassumingly equipped that 
instead of boots he wore wisps of straw called, I 
believe, sooghauns, go in front for a quarter of an 
hour on a two-year old ! Whatever his age, the 
colt shows himself an experienced hunter when 
it is necessary to leap. Not yet mouthed^ with 
unformed paces and wandering action, he may 
seem the merest baby on the road or across a 
field, but no veteran can be wiser or steadier 
when he comes within distance of it, or, as his 
owner would say, when he " challenges " his leap, 
and this enthusiast hardly over-states the truth 



IBISH HUNTEBS 151 

in affirming that his pupil "would change on 
the edge of a razor, and never let ye know he was 
off the Queen's high-road, God bless her, all the 
time ! " 

The Irishman, like the Arab, seems to possess 
a natural insight into the character of a horse ; 
with many shortcomings as grooms, not the least 
of which are want of neatness in stable-manage- 
ment, and rooted dislike to hard work, except 
by fits and starts, they cherish extraordinary 
affection for their charges, and certainly in their 
daalings with them obviously prefer kindness to 
coercion. I do not think they always understand 
feeding judiciously, and many of them have much 
to learn about getting horses into condition ; 
but they are unrivalled in teaching them to 
jump. 

Though seldom practised, there is no better 
system in all undertakings than " to begin with 
the beginning," and an Irish horse-breaker is so 
persuaded of this great elementary truth that he 
never asks the colt to attempt three feet till it 
has become thoroughly master of two. With a 
cavesson rein, a handful of oats, and a few yards 
of waste ground behind the potato-ground or the 
pig-styes, he will, by dint of skill and patience, 
turn the most blundering neophyte into an 
expert and stylish fencer in about six weeks. 
As he widens the ditch of his earthwork, he 
necessarily heightens its bank, which his shnple 



152 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

tools, the spade and the pipe, soon raise to six or 
seven feet. When the young one has learned to 
surmount this temperately, but with courage, to 
change on the top, and deliver itself handsomely, 
with the requisite fling and freedom, on the far 
side, he considers it sufficiently advanced to take 
into the fields, where he leads it forthwith, leav- 
ing behind him the spade, but holding fast to the 
corn, the cavesson, and the pipe. Here he soon 
teaches his colt to wait, quietly grazing, or staring 
about, while he climbs the fence he intends it to 
jump, and almost before the long rein can be 
tightened it follows like a dog, to poke its nose in 
his hand for the few grains of oats it expects as 
a reward. 

Some breakers drive their pupils from behind, 
with reins, pulling them up when they have 
accomplished the leap ; but this is not so good a 
plan as necessitating the use of the whip, and 
having, moreover, a further disadvantage in 
accustoming the colt to stop dead short on land- 
ing, a habit productive hereafter of inconvenience 
to a loose rider taken unawares ! 

When he has taught his horse thus to walk 
over a country, for two or three miles on end, 
the breaker considers it, with reason, thoroughly 
trained for leaping, and has no hesitation, how- 
ever low its condition, in riding it out with the 
hounds. Who that has hunted in Ireland but 
can recall the interest, and indeed amusement, 



IBISII HUNTEBS 153 

with which ho has watched some mere baby, 
strangely tackled and micouthly equipped, sail- 
ing along in the front rank, steered with 
consummate skill and temper by a venerable 
rider who looks sixty on horseback, and at least 
eighty on foot. The man's dress is of the 
shabbiest and most incongruous, his boots are 
outrageous, his spurs ill put on, and his hat 
shows symptoms of ill-usage in warfare or the 
chase ; but he sits in the saddle like a workman, 
and age has no more quenched the courage in 
his bright Irish eye, than it has soured the mirth 
of his temperament, or saddened the music of his 
brogue. You know instinctively that he must 
bo a good fellow and a good sportsman ; you 
cannot follow him for half a mile without being 
satisfied that ho is a good rider, and you forget, 
in your admiration of his beast's performance, 
your surprise at its obvious youth, its excessive 
leanness, and the unusual shabbiness of its 
accoutrements. Inspecting these more narrowly, 
if you can get near enough, you begin to grudge 
the sums you have paid Bartley, or Wilkinson 
and Kidd, for the neat turn-out you have been 
taught to consider indispensable to success. 
You see that a horse may cross a dangerous 
country speedily and in safety, though its saddle 
be pulpy and weather-stained, with unequal 
stirrup-leathers, and only one girth ; though its 
bridle be a Pelham, tvlth a noseband, and toithout 



154 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

a curb-chain, while one rein seems most untrust- 
worthy, and the other, for want of a buckle, has 
its ends tied in a knot. And yet, wherever the 
hounds go, thither follow this strangely-equipped 
pair. They arrive at a seven-foot bank, defended 
by a wide and, more forbidding still, an enor- 
mously deep ditch on this side and with nothing 
apparently but blue sky on the other. While the 
man utters an exclamation that seems a threat, 
a war-cry, and a shout of triumph combined, the 
horse springs to the summit, perches like a bird, 
and disappears buoyantly into space as if furnished, 
indeed, with wings, that it need only spread to 
fly away. They come to a stone-gap, as it is 
termed ; neither more nor less than a disused 
egress, made up with blocks of granite into a 
wall about five feet high, and the young one, 
getting close under it, clears the whole out of a 
trot, with the elasticity and the very action of a 
deer. Presently some frightful chasm has to be 
encountered, wide enough for a brook, deep 
enough for a ravine, boggy of approach, faced 
with stone, and offering about as awkward an 
appearance as ever defeated a good man on his 
best hunter and bade him go to look for a better 
place. 

Our friend in the bad hat, who knows what he 
is about, rides at this " yawner " a turn slower 
than would most Englishmen, and with a lighter 
hand on his horse's mouth, though his legs and 




" Like a bird, and disappears buoyantly into space," 
Riding Recollections.} [Pa-ge 154 



IBISH HUNTEBS 155 

knees are keeping the pupil well into its bridle, 
and, should the latter want to refuse or " renage," 
as they say in Ireland, a disgrace of which it has 
not the remotest idea, there is a slip of ground- 
ash in the man's fingers ready to administer " a 
refresher " on its flank. " Did ye draw now ? " 
asks an Irishman when his friend is describing 
how he accomplished some extraordinary feat in 
leaping, and the expression, derived from an 
obsolete custom of sticking the cutting-whip 
upright in the boot, so that it has come to mean 
punishment from that instrument, is nearly 
always answered — "I did not!'' Light as a 
fairy, our young, but experienced hunter dances 
down to the gulf, and leaves it behind with 
scarce an effort, while an unwashed hand 
bestows its caress on the reeking neck that will 
hereafter thicken prodigiously in some Saxon 
stable on a proper allowance of corn. If you are 
riding an Irish horse, you cannot do better than 
imitate closely every motion of the pair in front. 
If not, you will be wise, I think, to turn round 
and go home. 

Presently we will hope, for the sake of the 
neophyte, whose condition is by no means on a 
par with his natural powers, the hounds either 
kill their fox or run him to ground, or lose, or 
otherwise account for him, thus affording a few 
minutes' repose for breathing and conversation. 
"It's an intrickate country," observes some 



156 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

brother-sportsman with just such another mount 
to the veteran I have endeavoured to describe ; 
*' and will that be the colt by Chitchat out of 
Donovan's mare ? Does he ' lep ' well nov^ ? " he 
adds with much interest. " The beautifullest 
ever ye see ! " answers his friend, and nobody 
who has witnessed the young horse's performances 
can dispute the justice of such a reply. It is not 
difficult to understand that hunters so educated 
and so ridden in a country where every leap 
requires power, courage, and the exercise of 
much sagacity, should find little difficulty in 
surmounting such obstacles as confront them on 
this side of the Channel. It is child's play to fly a 
Leicestershire fence, even with an additional rail, 
for a horse that has been taught his business 
amongst the precipitous banks and fathomless 
ditches of Meath and Kildare. If the ground 
were always sound and the hills somewhat 
levelled, these Irish hunters v/ould find little to 
stop them in Leicestershire from going as straight 
as their owners dared ride. Practice at walls 
renders them clever timber-jumpers, they have 
usually the spring and confidence that make 
nothing of a brook, and their careful habit of 
preparing for something treacherous on the 
landing side of every leap prevents their being 
taken unawares by the "oxers" and doubles 
that form such unwelcome exceptions to the 
usual run of impediments throughout the shires. 



IBISH HUNTEBS 157 

There is something in the expression of their very 
ears while we put them at their fences, that 
seems to say, " It's a good trick enough, and 
would take in most horses, but my mother 
taught me a thing or two in Connemara, and 
you don't come over me ! " Unfortunately the 
Shires, as they are called _par excellence, the Vale 
of Aylesbury, a perfect wilderness of grass, and 
indeed all the best hunting districts, ride very 
deep nine seasons out of ten, so that the Irish 
horse, accustomed to a sound lime-stone soil and 
an unfurrowed surface in his own green island, 
being moreover usually much wanting in con- 
dition, feels the added labour, and difference of 
action required, severely enough. It is proverbial 
that a horse equal to fourteen stone in Ireland is 
only up to thirteen in Leicestershire, and English 
purchasers must calculate accordingly. 

But if some prize-taker at the Dublin Horse 
Show, or other ornament of that land, which 
her natives call the " first flower of the earth and 
first gem of the sea," should disappoint you a 
little when you ride him in November from 
Eanksborough, the Coplow, Crick, Melton- 
Spinney, Christmas-Gorse, Great-Wood, or any 
other favourite covert in one of our many good 
hunting countries, do not therefore despond. If 
he fail in deep ground, or labour on ridge and 
furrow, remember he possesses this inestimable 
merit that he can go the shortest way I Because 



158 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

the fence in front is large, black, and forbidding, 
you need not therefore send him at it a turn 
faster than usual ; he is accustomed to spring 
from Ms hacJi, and cover large places out of a 
trot. If you ride your own line to hounds, it is 
no slight advantage thus to have the power of 
negotiating awkward corners, without being 
"committed to them " fifty yards off, unable to 
pull up should they prove impracticable ; and the 
faculty of "jumping at short notice," on this 
consideration alone, I conceive to be one of the 
choicest qualities a hunter can possess. Also, 
even in the most favoured and flying of the 
" grass countries," many fences require unusual 
steadiness and circumspection. If they are to be 
done at all, they can only be accomplished by 
creeping, sometimes even climbing to the wished- 
for side. The front rank itself will probably 
shirk these unaccustomed obstacles with cordial 
unanimity, leaving them to be triumphantly 
disposed of by your new purchase from Kildare. 
He pokes out his nose, as if to inspect the depth 
of a possible interment, and it is wise to let him 
manage it all his own way. You give him his 
head, and the slightest possible kick in the ribs. 
With a cringe of his powerful back and quarters, 
a vigorous lift that seems to reach two-thirds of 
the required distance, a second spring, apparently 
taken from a twig weak enough to bend under a 
bird, that covers the remainder, a scramble for 



IBISH HUNTEBS 159 

foothold, a half stride and a snort of satisfaction, 
the whole is disposed of, and you are alone with 
the hounds. 

Though, under such circumstances, these seem 
pretty sure to run to ground or otherwise disap- 
point you within half-a-mile, none the less credit 
is due to your horse's capabilities, and you vow 
next season to have nothing but Irish nags in 
your stable, resolving for the future to ride 
straighter than you have ever done before. 

But if you are so well pleased now with your 
promising Patlander, what shall you think of 
him this time next year, when he has had twelve 
months of your stud-groom's stable-management, 
and consumed ten or a dozen quarters of good 
Enghsh oats? Though you may have bought 
him as a six-year-old, he will have grown in size 
and substance, even in height, and will not only 
look, but feel up to a stone more weight than 
you ever gave him credit for. He can jump 
when he is blown 7i02v, but he v/ill never be blown 
then. Condition will teach him to laugh at the 
deep ground, while his fine shoulders and true 
shape will enable him, after the necessary practice, 
to travel across ridge and furrow without a lurch. 
He will have turned out a rattling good horse, 
and you will never grudge the cheque you wrote, 
nor the punch you were obliged to drink, before 
his late proprietor would let you make him your 
own. 



160 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

Gold and whisky, in large quantities and 
judiciously applied, may no doubt buy the best 
horses in Ireland. But a man must know w^here 
to look for them, and even in remote districts, 
will sometimes be disappointed to find that the 
English dealers have forestalled him. Happily, 
there are so many good horses, perhaps I should 
say, so few rmik had ones, bred in the countr}^, 
that from the very sweepings and leavings of the 
market, one need not despair of turning up a 
trump. A hunter is in so far like a wife, that 
experience alone will prove whether he is or is 
not good for nothing. Make and shape, in either 
case, may be perfect, pedigree unimpeachable, 
and manners blameless, but who is to answer for 
temper, reflection, docility, and the generous 
staying power that accepts rough and smooth, 
ups and downs, good and evil, without a struggle 
or a sob ? When we have tried them, we find 
them out, and can only make the best of our 
disappointment, if they do not fully come up to 
our expectations. 

There is many a good hunter, particularly in 
a rich man's stable, that never has a chance 
of proving its value. With three or four, we 
know their form to a pound ; with a dozen, season 
after season goes by without furnishing occasion 
for the use of all, till some fine scenting day, after 
mounting a friend, we are surprised to learn that 
the flower of the whole stud has hitherto been 



IBISB HUNTEBS 161 

esteemed but a moderate animal, only fit to carry 
the sandwiches, and bring us home. 

I imagine, notwithstanding all we have heard 
and read concerning the difficulty of buying Irish 
horses in their own country, that there are still 
scores of them in Cork, Limerick, and other 
breeding districts, as yet unpromised and unsold. 
The scarcity of weight-carriers is indisputable, 
but can we find them here ? The " light man's 
horse," to fly under sixteen stone, is a " black 
swan " everywhere, and if not " a light man's 
horse," that is to say free, flippant, fast, and 
well-bred, he will never give his stalwart rider 
thorough satisfaction ; but in Ireland, far more 
plentifully than in England, are still to be found 
handsome, clever, hunting-like animals fit to 
carry thirteen stone, and capital jumpers at 
reasonable prices, varying from one to two 
hundred pounds. The latter sum, particularly 
if you had it with you in sovereigns, would in 
most localities insure the "pick of the basket," 
and ten or twenty of the coins thrown back for 
luck. 

I have heard it objected to Irish hunters, that 
they are so accustomed to "double" all their 
places, as to practise this accomplishment even 
at those flying fences of the grazing districts 
which ought to be taken in the stride, and that 
they require fresh tuition before they can be 
trusted at the staked-and-bound or the bullfinch, 

11 



162 BIDING HECOLLECTIONS 

lest, catching their feet in the growers as in a net, 
they should be t ambled headlong to the ground. 
I can only say that I have been well and safely 
carried by many of them on their first appearance 
in Leicestershire, as in other English counties, 
that they seemed intuitively to apprehend the 
character of the fences they had to deal with, and 
that, although being mortal, they could not 
always keep on their legs, I cannot remember 
one of them giving me a fall because he was 
an Irish horse ! 

How many their nationality has saved me, 1 
forbear to count, but I am persuaded that the 
careful tuition undergone in youth, and their 
varied experience when sufficiently advanced to 
follow hounds over their native country, imparts 
that facility of powerful and safe jumping, which 
is one of the most important qualities among the 
many that constitute a hunter. 

They possess also the merit of being universally 
well-bred. This is an advantage no sportsman will 
overlook who likes to be near hounds while they 
run, but objects to leading, driving, or perhaps 
pushing his horse home. Till within a few years, 
there was literally no cart-horse blood in Ireland. 
The "black-drop" of the ponderous Clydesdale 
remained positively unknown, and although the 
Suffolk Punch has been recently introduced, he 
cannot yet have sufficiently tainted the pedigrees 
of the country, to render us mistrustful of a 



IBISH HUNTS BS 163 

golden-coated chestnut, with a round barrel and 
a strong back. 

No, then' horses if not quite ''clean-bred," as 
the Irish themselves call it, are at least of 
illustrious parentage on both sides a few gene- 
rations back, and this high descent cannot but 
avail them, when called on for long-continued 
exertion, particularly at the end of the day. 

Juvenal, hurling his scathing satire against 
the patricians of his time, drew from the equine 
race a metaphor to illustrate the superiority 
of merit over birth. However unanswerable in 
argument, he was, I think, wrong in his facts. 
Men and women are to be found of every parent- 
age, good, bad, and indifferent ; but with horses, 
there is more in race than in culture, and for the 
selection of these noble animals at least, I can 
imagine no safer guide than the aristocratic 
maxim, " Blood will tell ! " 



CHAPTEK X 

THOBOUGH-BBED HOBSES 

I HAVE heard it affirmed, though I know not on 
what authority, that if we are to beheve the 
hunting records of the last hundred years, in all 
runs so severe and protracted as to admit of 
only one man getting to the finish, this excep- 
tional person was in every instance, riding an 
old horse, a thorough-bred horse, and a horse 
under fifteen-two ! 

Perhaps on consideration, this is a less remark- 
able statement than it appears. That the sur- 
vivor was an old horse, means that he had many 
years of corn and condition to pull him through ; 
that he was a little horse, infers he carried a 
light weight, but that he was a thorough-bred 
horse seems to me a reasonable explanation of 
the whole. 

" The thorough-bred ones never stop," is a 
common saying among sportsmen, and there are 

161 



THOROUGH-BRED HORSES 165 

daily instances of some high-born steed who can 
boast 

" His sire from the desert, his dam from the north," 

galloping steadily on, calm and vigorous, when 
the country behind him is dotted for miles with 
hunters standing still in every field. 

It is obvious that a breed, reared expressly for 
racing purposes, must be the fastest of its kind. 
A colt considered good enough to be " put 
through the mill" on Newmarket Heath, or 
Middleham Moor, whatever may be his short- 
comings in the select company he finds at school, 
cannot but seem " a flyer," when in after-life he 
meets horses, however good, that have neither 
been bred nor trained for the purpose of gallop- 
ing a single mile at the rate of an express train. 
While these are at speed he is only cantering, 
and we need not therefore be surprised that he 
can keep cantering on after they are reduced to 
walk. 

In the hunting-field, " what kills is the pace." 
When hounds can make it good enough they 
kill their fox, when horses cannot it kills them, 
and for this reason alone, if for no other, I 
would always prefer that my hunters should be 
quite thorough-bred. 

Though undoubtedly the best, I cannot afiirm, 
however, that they are always the pleasantest 



166 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

mounts ; far from it, indeed, just at first, though 
subsequent superiority makes amends for the 
little eccentricities of gait and temper peculiar 
to pupils from the racing-stable in their early 
youth. 

An idle, lurching mover, rather narrow before 
the saddle, with great power of back and loins, 
a habit of bearing on its rider's hand, one side 
to its mouth, and a loose neck, hardly inspires 
a careful man with the confidence necessary for 
enjoyment ; coming away from Eanksborough, 
for instance, down-hill, with the first fence 
leaning towards him, very little room, his horse 
too much extended, going on its shoulders, and 
getting the better of him at every stride 1 

But this is an extreme case, purposely chosen 
to illustrate at their worst, the disadvantages of 
riding a thorough-bred horse. 

It is often our own fault, when we buy one of 
these illustrious cast-offs, that our purchase so 
disappoints us after we have got it home. 
Many men believe that to carry them through 
an exhausting run, such staying powers are 
required as win under high weights and at long 
distances on the turf. 

Their selection, therefore, from the racing- 
stable, is some young one of undeniably stout 
blood, that when " asked the question " for the 
first time, has been found too slow to put in 
training. They argue with considerable show 



THOBOUGH-BBED HOBSES 167 

of reason, that it will prove quite speedy enough 
for a hunter, but they forget that though a fast 
horse is by no means indispensable to the chase, 
a quicJc one is most conducive to enjoyment 
when we are compelled to jump all sorts of 
fences out of all sorts of ground. 

Now a yearling, quick enough on its legs to 
promise a turn of speed, is pretty sure to be 
esteemed worth training, nor will it be con- 
demned as useless, till its distance is found to 
be just short of half-a-mile. In plain English, 
when it fails under the strain on wind and 
frame, of galloping at its very best, eight 
hundred and seventy yards, and " fades to 
nothing " in the next ten. 

Now this collapse is really more a question 
of speed than stamina. There is a want of 
reach or leverage somewhere, that makes its 
rapid action too laborious to be lasting, but 
there is no reason why the animal that comes 
short of five furlongs on the trial-ground, should 
not hold its own in front, for five miles 
of a steeple-chase, or fifteen of a run with 
hounds. 

These, in fact, are the so-called "weeds" 
that win our cross-country races, and when we 
reflect on the pace and distance of the Liverpool, 
four miles and three quarters run in something 
under eleven minutes, at anything but feather- 
weights, and over all sorts of fences, we cannot 



168 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

but admire the speed, gallantry, and endurance, 
the essentially game qualities of our English 
horse. And here I may observe that a good 
steeple-chaser, properly sobered and brought 
into his bridle, is one of the pleasantest hunters 
a man can ride, particularly in a flying country. 
He is sure to be able to "make haste" in all 
sorts of ground, while the smooth, easy stride 
that wins between the flags is invaluable through 
dirt. He does not lose his head and turn foolish, 
as do many good useful hunters, when bustled 
along for a mile or two at something like racing 
pace. Yery quick over his fences, his style of 
jumping is no less conducive to safety, than 
dispatch, while his courage is sure to be undeni- 
able, because the slightest tendency to refuse 
would have disqualified him for success in his 
late profession, wherein also, he must necessarily 
have learnt to be a free and brilliant water- 
jumper. 

Indeed you may always take tivo liberties with 
a steeple-chase horse during a run (not more). 
The first time you squeeze him, bethinks, " Oh ! 
this is the brook ! " and putting on plenty of 
steam, flings himself as far as ever he can. 
The second, he accepts your warning with equal 
good will. ''All right! " he seems to answer, 
" This is the brook, coming home ! " but if you 
try the same game a third time, I cannot under- 
take to say what may happen, you will probably 



THOROUGH-BBED HOBSES 169 

puzzle him exceedingly, upset his temper, and 
throw him out of gear for the day. 

We have travelled a long way, however, from 
our original subject, tuition of the thorough- 
bred for the field, or perhaps I should call it the 
task of turning a bad race-horse into a good 
hunter. 

Like every other process of education this 
requires exceeding perseverance, and a patience 
not to be overcome. The irritation of a moment 
may undo the lessons of a week, and if the master 
forgets himself, you may be sure the pupil will 
long remember which of the two was in fault. 
Never begin a quarrel if it can possibly be 
avoided, because, when war is actually declared, 
you must fight it out to the bitter end, and if 
you are beaten, you had better send your 
horse to Tattersall's, for you will never be 
master again. 

Stick to him till he does what you require, 
trusting nevertheless, rather to time than 
violence, and if you can get him at last to obey 
you of his own free will, without knowing why, 
I cannot repeat too often, you will have won the 
most conclusive of victories. 

When the late Sir Charles Knightley took 
Sir Marinel out of training, and brought him 
down to Pytchley, to teach him the way he 
should go (and the way of Sir Charles over a 
country was that of a bird in the air), he 



170 RIDINO RECOLLECTIONS 

found the horse restive, ignorant, wilful, and 
unusually averse to learning the business of a 
hunter. The animal was, however, well worth 
a little painstaking, and his owner, a perfect 
centaur in the saddle, rode him out for a lesson 
in jumping the first day the hounds remained in 
the kennel. At two o'clock, as his old friend 
and contemporary, Mr. John Cooke informed 
me, he came back, having failed to get the rebel 
over a single fence. " But I have told them 
not to take his saddle off," said Sir Charles, 
sitting down to a cutlet and a glass of Madeira, 
" after luncheon I mean to have a turn at him 
again ! " 

So the baronet remounted and took the lesson 
up where he had left off. Nerve, temper, 
patience, the strongest seat, and the finest hands 
in England, could not but triumph at last, and 
this thorough-bred pair came home at dinner- 
time, having larked over all the stiffest fences in 
the country, with perfect unanimity and goodwill. 
Sir Marinel, and Benvolio, also a thorough-bred 
horse, were by many degrees. Sir Charles has 
often told me, the best hunters he ever had. 

Shuttlecock too, immortalised in the famous 
Billesdon Coplow poem, when 

" Villiers esteemed it a serious bore, 
That no longer could Shuttlecock fly as before," 

was a clean thorough-bred horse, fast enough to 



TIIOBOUGH-BBED HOBSES 171 

have made a good figure on the race-course, but 
with a rooted disinclination to jump. 

That king of horsemen, the grandfather of the 
present Lord Jersey, whom I am proud to re- 
member having seen ride fairly away from a 
whole Leicestershire field, over a rough country 
not far from Melton, at seventy-three, told me 
that this horse, though it turned out eventually 
one of his safest and boldest fencers, at the end 
of six weeks' tuition would not jump the leaping- 
bar the height of its own knees ! His lordship, 
however, who was blessed in perfection with 
the sweet temper, as with the personal beauty 
and gallant bearing of his race, neither hurried 
nor ill-used it, and the time spent on the 
animal's education, though somewhat weari- 
some, was not thrown away. 

Mr. Gilmour's famous Vingt-et-un, the best 
hunter, he protests, by a great deal that 
gentleman ever possessed, was quite thorough- 
bred. Seventeen hands high, but formed all 
over in perfect proportion to this commanding 
frame, it may easily be imagined that the power 
and stride of so large an animal made light of 
ordinary obstacles, and I do not believe, though 
it may sound an extravagant assertion, there 
was a fence in the whole of Leicestershire that 
could have stopped Vingt-et-un and his rider, on 
a good scenting day some few years ago. Such 
men and such horses ought never to grow old. 



172 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

Mr. William Cooke, too, owned a celebrated 
hunter called Advance, of stainless pedigree, as 
was December, so named from being foaled on 
the last day of that month, a premature arrival 
that lost him his year for racing purposes by 
twenty-four hours, and transferred the colt to 
the hunting-stables. Mr. Cooke rode nothing 
but this class, nor indeed could any animal less 
speedy than a race-horse, sustain the pace he 
liked to go. 

Whitenose, a beautiful animal that the late 
Sir Eichard Sutton affirmed was not only the 
best hunter he ever owned, but that he ever saw^ 
or heard of, and on whose back he is painted in 
Sir F. Grant's spirited picture of the Cottesmore 
Meet, was also quite thorough-bred. When Sir 
Eichard hunted the Burton country, Whitenose 
carried him through a run so severe in pace and 
of such long duration, that not another horse 
got to the end, galloping, his master assured me, 
steadily on without a falter, to the last. By the 
way, he was then of no great age, and nearer 
sixteen hands than fifteen-two ! This was a 
very easy horse to ride, and could literally jump 
anything he got his nose over. A picture to 
look at, with a coat like satin, the eyes of a deer, 
and the truest action in his slow as in his fast 
paces, he has always been my ideal of perfection 
in a hunter. 

But it would be endless to enumerate the 



THOBOUGH-BBED HOBSES 173 

many examples I can recall of the thorough- 
bred's superiority in the hunting-field. Those I 
have mentioned belong to a by-gone time, but a 
man need not look very narrowly into any knot 
of sportsmen at the present day, particularly 
after a sharpish scurry in deep ground, before 
his eye rests on the thin tail, and smoothly 
turned quarters, that need no gaudier blazon to 
attest the nobility of their descent. 

If you mean, however, to ride a thorough-bred 
one, and choose to make him yourself, do not 
feel disappointed that he seems to require more 
time and tuition than his lower-born cousins, 
once and twice removed. 

In the first place you will begin by thinking 
him wanting in courage ! Where the half-bred 
one, eager, flurried, and excited, rushes wildly 
at an unaccustomed difficulty, your calmer 
gentleman proceeds deliberately to examine its 
nature, and consider how he can best accomplish 
his task. It is not that he has less valour, but 
more discretion ! In the monotonous process of 
training, he has acquired, with other tiresome 
tricks, the habit of doing as little as he can, in 
the different paces, walk, canter, and gallop, of 
which he has become so weary. Even the 
excitement of hunting till hounds really run, 
hardly dissipates his aristocratic lethargy, but 
only get him in front for one of those scurries 
that, perhaps twice in a season, turn up a fox in 



174 BIDING BECOLLEGTIONS 

twenty minutes, and if you dare trust him, you 
will be surprised at the bi'illiant performance of 
your idle, negligent, wayward young friend, fie 
bends kindly to the bridle he objected to all the 
morning, he tucks his quarters in, and scours 
through the deep ground like a hare, he slides 
over rather than jumps his fences, with the 
easy swoop of a bird on the wing, and when 
everything of meaner race has been disposed of 
a field or two behind, he trots up to some 
high bit of timber, and leaps it gallantly 
without a pause, though only yesterday he 
would have turned round to kick at it for an 
hour ! 

Still, there are many chances against your 
having such an opportunity as this. Most days 
the hounds do not run hard. When they do, 
you are perhaps so unfortunate as to lose your 
start, and finally, should everything else be in 
your favour, it is twenty to one you are riding 
the wrong horse ! 

Therefore, the process of educating your young 
one, must be conducted on quieter principles, 
and in a less haphazard way. If you can find a 
pack of harriers, and tJieir master does not object, 
there is no better school for the troublesome or 
unwilling pupil. But remember, I entreat, that 
horsebreaking is prejudicial to sport, and most 
unwelcome. You are there on sufferance, take 
care to interfere with nobody, and above all. 



THOBOUGH-BBED HOBSES 175 

keep wide of the hounds ! The great advantage 
you will find in harehunting over the wilder 
pursuit of the fox, is in the circles described by 
your game. There is plenty of time to "have 
it out" with a refuser, and indeed to turn him 
backwards and forwards if you please, over the 
same leap, without fear of being left behind. 
The "merry harriers" are pretty sure to return 
in a few minutes, and you can begin again, with 
as much enthusiasm of man and horse as if you 
had never been out of the hunt at all ! Whip 
and spur, I need hardly insist, cannot be used 
too sparingly, and anything in the way of haste 
or over-anxiety is prejudicial, but if it induces 
him to jump in his stride, you may ride this 
kind of horse a turn faster at his fences, than 
any other. You can trust him not to be in too 
great a hurry, and it is his nature to take care 
of himself. Till he has become thoroughly 
accustomed to his new profession, it is well to 
avoid such places as seem particularly distaste- 
ful and likely to make him rebel. His fine skin 
will cause him to be a little shy of thick bull- 
finches, and his sagacity mistrusts deep or blind 
ditches, such as less intelligent animals would 
run into without a thought. Kather select rails, 
or clean upright fences, that he can compass 
and understand. Try to imbue him with love for 
the sport and confidence in his rider. After a 
few weeks, he will turn his head from nothing, 



17G BIDING EECOLLECTIONS 

and go straightor, as well as faster, and longer 
than anything in your stahle. 

An old Meltonian used to affirm that the first 
two articles of his creed for the hunting season 
were, " a perfectly pure claret, and thorough- 
bred horses." Of the former he was unsparing 
to his friends, and the latter he used freely 
enough for himself. Certainly no man gave 
pleasanter dinners, or was bettor carried, and 
one might do worse than go to Melton with 
implicit reliance on these twin accessories of 
the chase. All opinions must bo agreed, I fancy, 
about the one, but there are still many prejudices 
against the other. Heavy men especially declare 
they cannot find thorough-bred horses to carry 
them, forgetting, it would seem, that size is no 
more a criterion of strength than haste is of speed. 
The bone of a thorough-bred horse is of the 
closest and toughest fibre, his muscles are well 
developed, and his joints elastic. Do not these 
advantages infer power, no less than stamina, 
and in our own experience have we not all 
reason to corroborate the old-fashioned maxim, 
"It is action that carries weight"? Nimrod, 
who understood the subject thoroughly, observes 
with groat truth, that "'Wind' is strength; 
when a horse is blown a mountain or a mole-hill 
are much the same to him," and no sportsman 
who has ever scaled a Highland hill to circum- 
vent a red-doer, or walk up to "a point," will 



TIIOBOUGII-BBED HOBSES 111 

dispute the argument. What a game animal it 
is, that without touch of spur, at the mere 
pleasure and caprice of a rider, struggles 
gallantly on till it drops ! 

There used to be a saying in the Prize Ring, 
that " Seven pounds will lick the best man in 
England." This is but a technical mode of 
stating that, ccBteris paribus, weight means 
strength. Thirty years ago, it was a common 
practice at Melton to weigh hunters after they 
were put in condition, and sportsmen often 
wondered to find how the eye had deceived 
them, in the comparative tonnage, so to speak, 
and consequently, the horse-power of these 
different conveyances ; the thorough-bred, with- 
out exception, proving far heavier than was 
supposed. 

An athlete, we all know, whether boxer, 
wrestler, pedestrian, cricketer or gymnast, looks 
smaller in his clothes, and larger when he is 
stripped. Similarly, on examining in the stable, 
" the nice little horse " we admired in the field, 
it surprises us to find nearly sixteen hands of 
height, and six feet of girth, with power to cor- 
respond in an animal of which we thought the 
only defect was want of size. A thorough-bred 
one is invariably a little bigger, and a great deal 
stronger than he looks. Of his power to carry 
weight, those tall, fine men who usually ride 
so judiciously and so straight, are not yet 

12 



178 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

sufficiently convinced, although if you ask any 
celebrated ''welter" to name the best horse he 
ever had, he is sure to answer, "Oh! little So- 
and-so. He wasn't up to my weight, but he 
carried me better than anything else in the 
stable ! " Surely no criterion could be more 
satisfactory than this ! 

It may not be out of place to observe here, 
as an illustration of the well-known maxim, 
" Horses can go in all shapes," that of the three 
heaviest men I can call to mind who rode per- 
fectly straight to hounds, the best hunter owned 
by each was too long in the back. " Sober 
Eobin," an extraordinary animal that could 
carry Mr. Eichard Gurney, riding twenty stone, 
ahead of all the light-weights, was thus shaped. 
A famous bay-horse, nearly as good, belonging 
to the late Mr. Wood of Brixworth Hall, an 
equally heavy man, who when thus mounted, 
never stopped to open a gate ! had, his owner 
used to declare, as many vertebrae as a crocodile, 
and Colonel Wyndham whose size and superiority 
in the saddle I have already mentioned, hesitated 
a week before he bought his famous black mare, 
the most brilliant hunter he ever possessed, 
because she was at least three inches too long 
behind the saddle ! 

I remember also seeing the late Lord Mayo 
ride fairly away from a Pytchley field, no easy 
task, between Lilbourne and Cold Ashby, on a 



THOBOUGH-BBED HOB SB S 179 

horse that except for its enormous depth of girth, 
arguing unfaiHng wind, seemed to have no good 
points whatever to catch the eye. It was tall, 
narrow, plain-headed, with very bad shoulders, 
and very long legs, all this to carry at least 
eighteen stone ; but it was nearly, if not quite, 
thorough-bred. 

We need hardly dwell on the advantages of 
speed and endurance, inherited from the Arab, 
and improved, as we fondly hope, almost to per- 
fection, through the culture of many generations, 
while even the fine temper of the " desert-born " 
has not been so warped by the tricks of stable- 
boys, and the severity of turf-discipline, but that 
a little forbearance and kind usage soon restores 
its natural docility. 

In aU the qualities of a hunter, the thorough- 
bred horse, is, I think, superior to the rest of his 
kind. You can hardly do better than buy one, 
and "make him to your hand," should you be 
blessed with good nerves, a fine temper, and a 
delicate touch, or, wanting these qualities, con- 
fide him to some one so gifted, if you wish to be 
carried well and pleasantly, in your love for 
hunting, perhaps I should rather say, for the 
keen and stirring excitement we call "riding to 
hounds." 



CHAPTEK XI 

BIDING TO FOX-HOUNDS 

"If you want to be near hounds," says an old 
friend of mine who, for a Hfe-time, has religiously 
practised what he preaches, "the method is 
simple, and seems only common sense — Jceej) as 
close to thein as ever tjou can ! " but I think, 
though, with his undaunted nerve, and extra- 
ordinary horsemanship, he seems to find it 
feasible enough, this plan, for most people, 
requires considerable management, and no little 
modification. 

I grant we should never let them slip away 
from us, and that, in nine cases out of ten, when 
defeated by what we choose to call "a bad turn" 
it is our own fault. At the same time, there are 
many occasions on which a man who keeps his 
eyes open, and knows how to ride, can save his 
horse to some purpose, by travelling inside the 
pack, and galloping a hundred yards for their 
three. 



BIDING TO FOX-HOUNDS 181 

I say wJio heepa his eijes ojjen, because, in order 
to effect this economy of speed and distance, it 
is indispensable to watch their doings narrowly, 
and to possess the experience that tells one 
when they are really on the line, and when 
only flinging forward to regain, with the dash that 
is a fox-hound's chief characteristic, the scent 
they have over-run. Constant observation will 
alone teach us to distinguish the hounds that 
are right ; and to turn with them judiciously, is 
the great secret of " getting to the end." 

We must, therefore, be within convenient 
distance, and to ensure such proximity, it is 
most desirable to get a good start. Let us begin 
at the beginning, and consider how this primary 
essential is to be obtained. 

Directly a move is made from the place of 
meeting, it is well to cut short all " coffee-house " 
conversation, even at the risk of neglecting 
certain social amenities, and to lix our minds at 
once on the work in hand. A good story, though 
pleasant enough in its way, cannot compare 
with a good run, and it is quite possible to lose 
the one by too earnest attention to the other. 

A few courteous words previously addressed to 
the huntsman will ensure his civility during the 
day ; but this is not a happy moment for impart- 
ing to him your opinion on things in general and 
his own business in particular. He has many 
matters to occupy his thoughts, and docs not 



182 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

care to see you in the middle of his favourites on 
a strange horse. It is better to keep the second 
whip between yourself and the hounds, jogging 
calmly on, with a pleasant view of their well- 
filled backs and handsomely-carried sterns, 
taking care to pull up, religiously murmuring the 
orthodox caution — " Ware horse ! " when any 
one of them requires to pause for any purpose. 
You cannot too early impress on the hunt servants 
that you are a lover of the animal, most averse 
to interfering with it at all times, and especially 
in the ardour of the chase. If the size and 
nature of the covert will admit, you had better 
go into it with the hounds, and on this occasion, 
but no other, I think it is permissible to make 
use of the huntsman's pilotage at a respectful 
distance. Where there are foxes there is game, 
where game, riot. A few young hounds must 
come out with every pack, and the rate or cheer 
of your leader will warn you whether their open- 
ing music means a false flourish or a welcome 
find. Also where he goes you can safely follow, 
and need have no misgivings that the friendly 
hand-gate for which he is winding down some 
tortuous ride will be nailed up. 

Besides, though floundering in deep, sloughy 
woodlands entails considerable labour on your 
horse, it is less distressing than that gallop of a 
mile or two at speed which endeavours, but 
usually fails, to make amends for a bad start ; 



BIDING TO FOX-HOUNDS 183 

whereas, if you get away on good terms, you can 
indulge him with a pull at the first opportunity, 
and those scenting days are indeed rare on which 
hounds run many fields without at least a hover, 
if not a check. 

Some men take their station outside the covert, 
down wind, in a commanding position, so as to 
hear every turn of the hounds, secure a front 
place for the sport, and — head the fox ! 

But we will suppose all such difficulties over- 
come; that a little care, attention, and common 
sense have enabled you to get away on good 
terms with the pack ; and that you emerge not 
a bowshot off, while they stream across the first 
field with a dash that brings the mettle to your 
heart and the blood to your brain. Do not, 
therefore, lose your head. It is the charac- 
teristic of good manhood to be physically calm 
in proportion to moral excitement. Eemember 
there are two occasions in chase when the 
manner of hounds is not to be trusted. On first 
coming away with their fox, and immediately 
before they kill him, the steadiest will lead you 
to believe there is a burning scent and that they 
cannot make a mistake. Nevertheless, hope for 
the best, set your horse going, and if, as you 
sail over, or crash through, the first fence, you 
mark the pack driving eagerly on, drawn to a line 
at either end by the pace, harden your heart, and 
thank your stars. It is all right, you may lay 
odds, you are in for a really good thing ! 



184 HIDING HECOLLEGTIONS 

I suppose I need liiirdly observe that the laws 
of fox-hunting forbid you to follow hounds by the 
very obvious process of galloping in their track. 
Nothing makes them so wild, to use the proper 
term, as " riding on their line " ; and should you 
be ignorant enough to attempt it, you are pretty 
sure to be told where you are driving them, and 
desired to go there yourself ! 

No ; you must keep one side or the other, but 
do not, if you can help it, let the nature of the 
obstacles to be encountered bias your choice. 
Ride for ground as far as possible when the foot- 
hold is good ; the fences will take care of them- 
selves ; but let no advantages of sound turf, nor 
even open gates, tempt you to stray more than a 
couple of hundred yards from the pack. At that 
distance a bad turn can be remedied, and a good 
one gives you leisure to pull back into a trot. 
Kemember, too, that it is the nature of a fox, 
and we are now speaking of fox-hunting, to travel 
down wind ; therefore, as a general rule, keep to 
leeward of the hounds. Every bend they make 
ought to be in your favour ; but, on the other 
hand, should they chance to turn up wind, they 
will begin to run very hard, and this is a good 
reason for never letting them get, so to speak, 
out of your reach. I repeat, as a general rule, 
but by no means without exception. In 
Leicestorshii'o especially, foxes seem to scorn 
this line old principle, and will make their point 



BIDING TO FOX-HOUNDS 185 

with a stiff breeze blowing in their teeth ; but on 
such occasions they do not usually mean to go 
very far, and the gallant veteran, with his white 
tag, that gives you the run to be talked of for 
years, is almost always a wind-sinker from wold 
or woodland in an adjoining hunt. 

Suppose, however, the day is perfectly calm, 
and there seems no sufficient reason to prefer 
one course to the other, should we go to right or 
left ? This is a matter in which neither precept 
nor personal experience can avail. One man is 
as sure to do right as the other to do wrong. 
There is an intuitive perception, more animal 
than human, of what we may call " the line of 
chase," with which certain sportsmen are gifted 
by nature, and which, I believe, would bring them 
up at critical points of the finest and longest runs 
if they came out hunting in a gig. This faculty, 
where everything else is equal, causes A to ride 
better than B, but is no less difficult to explain 
than the instinct that guides an Indian on the 
prairie or a swallow across the sea. It counsels 
the lady in her carriage, or the old coachman 
piloting her children on their ponies, it enables 
the butcher to come up on his hack, the first- 
flight man to save his horse, and above all, the 
huntsman to kill his fox. 

The Duke of Beaufort possesses it in an 
extraordinary degree. When so crippled by 
gout, or reduced by suffering as to be unable 



186 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

to keep the saddle over a fence, he seems, even 
in strange countries, to see no less of the sport 
than in old days, when he could ride into every 
field with his hounds. And I do believe that 
now, in any part of Gloucestershire, with ten 
couple of ''the badger-pyed " and a horn, he 
could go out and kill his fox in a Bath-chair! 

Perhaps, however, his may be an extreme 
case. No man has more experience, few such a 
natural aptitude and fondness for the sport. 
Lord Worcester, too, like his father, has shown 
how an educated gentleman, with abilities equal 
to all exigencies of a high position that affords 
comparatively little leisure for the mere amuse- 
ments of life, can excel, in their own profession, 
men who have been brought up to it from child- 
hood, whose thoughts and energies, winter and 
summer, morning, noon, and night, are concen- 
trated on the business of the chase. 

This knack of getting to hounds then — should 
we consider genius or talent too strong terms to 
use for proficiency in field sports — while a most 
valuable quality to everybody who comes out 
hunting, is no less rare than precious. If we 
have it we are to be congratulated and our horses 
still more, but if, like the generality of men, 
we have it not, let us consider how far common 
sense and close attention will supply the want 
of a natural gift. 

It was said of an old friend of mine, the 



BIDING TO FOX-HOUNDS 187 

keenest of the keen, that he always rode as if 
he had never seen a run before, and should never 
see a run again ! This, I believe, is something of 
the feeling with which we ought to be possessed, 
impelling us to take every legitimate advantage 
and to throw no possible chance away. It 
cannot be too often repeated that judicious 
choice of ground is the very first essential for 
success. Therefore the hunting-field has always 
been considered so good a school for cavalry 
officers. There seems no limit to the endurance 
of a horse in travelling over a hard and tolerably 
level surface, even under heavy weight, but we 
all know the fatal effect of a very few yards in a 
steam-ploughed field, when the gallant animal 
sinks to its hocks every stride. Keep an eye 
forward then, and shape your course where the 
foothold is smooth and sound. In a hilly country 
choose the sides of the slopes, above, rather than 
below, the pack, for, if they turn away from you, 
it is harder work to gallop up, than down. In 
the latter case, and for this little hint I am 
indebted to Lord Wilton, do not increase your 
speed so as to gain in distance, rather preserve 
the same regular pace, so as to save in wind. 
Descending an incline at an easy canter, and 
held well together, your horse is resting almost 
as if he were standing still. It is quite time 
enough when near the bottom to put on a spurt 
that will shoot him up the opposite rise. 



188 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

On the grass, if you must cross ridgo-and- 
furrow, take it aslant, your horse will pitch less 
on his shoulders, and move with greater ease, 
while if they lie the right way, by keeping him 
on the crest, rather than in the trough of those 
long parallel rollers, you will ensure firm ground 
for his gallop, and a sounder, as well as higher 
take-off for the leap, when he comes to his fence. 

I need hardly remind you that in all swampy 
places, rushes may be trusted implicitly, and 
experienced hunters seem as well aware of the 
fact as their riders. Vegetable growth, indeed, 
of any kind has a tendency to suck moisture into 
its fibres, and consequently to drain, more or less, 
the surface in its immediate vicinity. The deep 
rides of a woodland are least treacherous at their 
edges, and the brink of a brook is most reliable 
close to some pollard or alder bush, particularly 
on the upper side, as Mr. Bromley Davenport 
knew better than most people, when he wrote 
his thrilling lines : — 

" Then steady, my young one I the place I've selected 
Above the dwarf willow, is sound, I'll be bail ; 
With your muscular quarters beneath you collected, 
Prepare for a rush like the limited mail I " 

But we cannot always be on the grass, nor, 
happily are any of us obliged, often in a life- 
time, to ride at the Whissendine ! 

In ploughed land, choose a wet furrow, for the 
simple reason that water would not stand in it 



BIDING TO FOX-IIOUNDS 189 

unless the bottom were hard, but if you cannot 
find one, nor a foot-path, nor a cart-track 
trampled down into a certain consistency, 
remember the fable of the hare and the tortoise, 
pull your horse back into a trot, and never fear 
but that you will be able to make up your leeway 
when you arrive at better ground. It is fortunate 
that the fences are usually less formidable here 
than in the pastures, and will admit of creeping 
into, and otherwise negotiating, with less expen- 
diture of power, so you may travel pretty safely, 
and turn at pleasure, shorter than the hounds. 

There are plough countries, notably in 
Gloucestershire and Wilts, that ride light. To 
them the above remarks in no way apply. 
Inclosed with stone walls, if there is anything 
like a scent, hounds carry such a head, and run 
so hard over these districts, that you must simply 
go as fast as your horse's pace, and as straight 
as his courage admits, but if you have the Duke 
of Beaufort's dog-pack in front of you, do not be 
surprised to find, with their extraordinary dash 
and enormous stride, that even on the pick of 
your stable, ere you can jump into one field they 
are half-way across the next. 

In hunting, as in everything else, compensation 
seems the rule of daily life, and the very 
brilliancy of the pace affords its own cure. 
Either hounds run into their fox, or, should he 
find room to turn, flash over the scent, and bring 



190 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

themselves to a check. You will not then regret 
having made play while you could, and although 
no good sportsman, and, indeed, no kind-hearted 
man, would overtax the powers of the most 
generous animal in creation, still we must 
remember that we came out for the purpose of 
seeing the fun, and unless we can keep near the 
hounds while they run we shall lose many 
beautiful instances of their sagacity when brought 
to their noses, and obliged to hunt. 

There is no greater treat to a lover of the chase 
than to watch a pack of high-bred fox-hounds 
that have been running hard on pasture, brought 
suddenly to a check on the dusty sun-dried 
fallows. After dashing and snatching in vain 
for a furlong or so, they will literally quarter 
their ground like pointers, till they recover the 
line, every yard of which they make good, with 
noses down and sterns working as if from the 
concentrated energy of all their faculties, till 
suspicion becomes certainty, and they lay them- 
selves out once more, in the uncontrolled ecstasy 
of pursuit. 

Now if you are a mile behind, you miss all 
these interesting incidents, and lose, as does 
your disappointed hunter, more than half the 
amusement you both came out to enjoy. The 
latter too, works twice as hard when held back 
in the rear, as when ridden freely and fearlessly 
in front. The energy expended in fighting with 



BIDING TO FOX-HOUNDS 191 

his rider would itself suffice to gallop many a 
furlong and leap many a fence, while the moral 
effect of disappointment is most disheartening to a 
creature of such a highly-strung nervous organi- 
sation. Look at the work done by a huntsman's 
horse before the very commencement of some 
fine run, the triumphant conclusion of which 
depends so much on his freshness at the finish, 
and yet how rarely does he succumb to the 
labour of love imposed ; but then he usually 
leaves the covert in close proximity to his friends 
the hounds, every minute of his toil is cheered 
by their companionship, and, having no leeway 
to make up he need not be overpaced when they 
are running their hardest, while ho finds a 
moment's leisure to recover himself when they 
are hunting their closest and best. In those 
long and severe chases, to which, unhappily, two 
or three horses may sometimes be sacrificed, 
the "first flight " are not usually sufferers. 
Death from exhaustion is more likely to be 
inflicted cruelly, though unwittingly on his 
faithful friend and comrade, by the injudicious 
and hesitating rider, who has neither decision to 
seize a commanding position in front, nor self- 
denial to be satisfied with an unassuming retire- 
ment in rear. His valour and discretion are 
improperly mixed, like bad punch, and fatal is 
the result. A timely pull means simply the 
difference between breathlessness and exhaustion, 



192 lUDINO RECOLLECTIONS 

but this opportune relief is only available for 
him who knows exactly how far they brought 
it, and where the hounds flashed beyond the line 
of their fox at a check. 

I remember in my youth, alas ! long ago, " the 
old sportsman " — a character for whom, I fear, 
we entertained in my day less veneration than 
we professed — amongst many inestimable pre- 
cepts was fond of propounding the following : — 

"Young gentlemen, nurse your hunter care- 
fully at the beginning of a run, and when the 
others are tired ho will enable you to see the 
end." 

Now with all due deference to the old sports- 
man, I take leave to differ with him i/i toto. By 
nursing one's horse, I conclude he meant riding 
him at less than half-speed during that critical 
ten minutes when hounds run their very hardest 
and straightest. If we follow this cautious 
advice, who is to solve the important question, 
" Which way are they gone ? " when we canter 
anxiously up to a sign-post where four roads 
meet, with a fresh and eager horse indeed, but 
not the wildest notion towards which point of 
the compass we should direct his energies ? We 
can but stop to listen, take counsel of a country- 
man who unwittingly puts us wrong, ride to 
points, speculate on chances, and make up our 
minds neverto be really on terms with them again ! 

No, I think on the contrary, the best and 



BIDING TO FOX-HOUNDS 193 

most experienced riders adopt a very different 
system. On the earliest intimation that hounds 
are ''away," they may bo observed getting after 
them with all the speed they can make. Who 
ever saw Mr. Portman, for instance, trotting 
across the first field when his bitches were well 
out of covert settling on the line of their fox ? — 
and I only mention his name because it occurs 
to me at the moment, and because, notwithstand- 
ing the formidable hills of his wild country and 
the pace of his Hying pack, he is always present 
at the finish, to render them assistance if required, 
as it often must be, with a sinking fox. 

" The first blow is half the battle " in juany 
nobler struggles than a street brawl with a cad, 
and the very speed at which you send your horse 
along for a few furlongs, if the ground is at all 
favourable, enables you to give him a pull at the 
earliest opportunity, without fear lest the whole 
distant panorama of the hunt should fade into 
space while you are considering what to do next. 

Not that I mean you to over-mark, or push him 
for a single stride, beyond the collected pace at 
which he travels with ease and comfort to him- 
self ; for remember he is as much your partner 
as the fairest young lady ever trusted to your 
guidance in a ball-room : but I do mean that 
you should make as much haste as is compatible 
with your mutual enjoyment, and, reflecting on 

the capricious nature of scent, take the chance of 

13 



194 BIDING BECOLLEGTIONS 

its failure, to afford you a moment's breathing- 
time when most required. 

At all periods of a fox-chase, be careful to 
anticipate a chech. Never with more foresight 
than when flying along in the ecstasy of a quick 
thing, on a brilliant hunter. Keep an eye 
forward, and scan with close attention every 
moving object in front. There you observe a 
flock of sheep getting into line like cavalry for a 
charge — that is where the fox has gone. Or 
perhaps a man is ploughing half a mile further 
on ; in all probability this object will have headed 
him, and on the discretion with which you ride 
at these critical moments may depend the perfor- 
mance of the pack, the difference between " a 
beautiful turn" and "an unlucky check." The 
very rush of your gallop alongside them will 
tempt high-mettled hounds into the indiscretion 
of over-running their scent. Whereas, if you 
take a pull at your horse, and give them plenty of 
room, they will swing to the line, and wheel like 
a flock of pigeons on the wing. 

Always ride, then, to command hounds if you 
can, but never be tempted, when in this proud 
position, to press them, and to spoil your own 
sport, with that of every one else. 

If so fortunate as to view him, and near enough 
to distinguish that it is the hunted fox, think 
twice before you halloa. More time will be lost 
than gained by getting their heads up, if the 



BIDING TO FOX-HOUNDS 195 

hounds are still on the line, and even when at 
fault, it is questionable whether they do not 
derive less assistance than excitement from the 
human voice. Much depends on circumstances, 
much on the nature of the pack. I will not say 
you are never to open your mouth, but I think 
that if the inmates of our deaf and dumb asylums 
kept hounds, these would show sport above the 
average, and would seldom go home without 
blood. Noise is by no means a necessary con- 
comitant of the chase, and a hat held up, or a 
quiet whisper to the huntsman, is of more help 
to him than the loudest and clearest view-holloa 
that ever wakened the dead "from the lungs of 
John Peel in the morning." 

We have hitherto supposed that you are riding 
a good horse, in a good place, and have been so 
fortunate as to meet with none of those reverses 
that are nevertheless to be expected on occasion, 
particularly when hounds run hard and the 
ground is deep. The best of hunters may fall, 
the boldest of riders be defeated by an imprac- 
ticable fence. Hills, bogs, a precipitous ravine, 
or even an unlucky turn in a wood may place you 
at a mile's disadvantage, almost before you have 
realised your mistake, and you long for the wings 
of an eagle, while cursing the impossibility of 
taking back so much as a single minute from the 
past. It seems so easy to ride a run when it is over! 

But do not therefore despair. Pull yourself 



196 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

well together, no less than your horse. Keep 
steadily on at a regulated pace, watching the 
movements of those who are with the hounds, 
and ride inside them, every bend. No fox goes 
perfectly straight — -he must turn sooner or later — 
and when the happy moment arrives be ready to 
back your luck, and pounce ! But here, again, I 
would have your valour tempered with discretion. 
If your horse does not see the hounds, be careful 
how you ride him at such large places as he 
would face freely enough in the excitement of 
their company. Not one hunter in fifty is really 
fond of jumping, and we hardly give them sufii- 
cient credit for the good-humour with which they 
accept it as a necessity for enjoyment of the sport. 
Avoid water especially, unless you have reason to 
believe the bottom is good, and you can go in 
and out. Even under such favourable conditions 
look well to your egress. There is never much 
difficulty about the entrance, and do not forget 
that the middle is often the shallowest, and 
always the soundest part of a brook. "When 
tempted therefore to take a horse, that you know 
is a bad water-jumper, at this serious obstacle, 
you are most likely to succeed, if you only ask 
him to jump half-way. Should he drop his hind- 
legs under the farther bank, he will probably not 
obtain foothold to extricate himself, particularly 
with your weight on his back. 

We are all panic-stricken, and with reason, at 



BIDING TO FOX-HOUNDS 197 

the idea of being submerged, but we might wade 
through many more brooks than w^e usually 
suppose. I can remember seeing the Eowsham, 
generally believed to be bottomless, forded in 
perfect safety by half-a-dozen of the finest and 
heaviest bullocks the Yale of Aylesbury ever 
fattened into beef. This, too, close to a hunting- 
bridge, put there by Baron Rothschild because of 
the depth and treacherous nature of the stream ! 

A hard road, however, though to be avoided 
religiously when enjoying a good place with 
hounds, is an invaluable ally on these occasions 
of discomfiture and vexation, if it leads in the 
same direction as the line of chase. On its firm, 
unyielding surface your horse is regaining his 
wind with every stride. Should a turnpike-gate 
bar your progress, chuck the honest fellow a 
shilling who swings it back and never mind the 
change. We hunt on sufferance ; for our own 
sakes we cannot make the amusement too popular 
with the lower classes. The same argument 
holds good as to feeing a countryman who assists 
you in any way when you have a red coat on 
your back. Eeward him with an open hand. 
He will go to the public-house and drink "fox- 
hunting" amongst his friends. It is impossible 
to say how many innocent cubs are preserved 
by such judicious liberality to die what Charles 
Payne calls '' a natural death." 

And now your quiet perseverance meets its 



198 BIDING BEGOLLECTIONS 

reward. You regain your place with the hounds 
and are surprised to find how easily and temper- 
ately your horse, not yet exhausted, covers large 
flying fences in his stride. A half-heaten hunter, 
as I have already observed, will " lob over " high 
and wide places if they can be done in a single 
effort, although instinct causes him to " cut them 
very fine," and forbids unnecessary exertion ; but 
it is " the beginning of the end," and you must 
not presume on his game, enduring qualities 
too long. 

The object of your pursuit, however, is also 
mortal. By the time you have tired an honest 
horse in good condition the fox is driven to his 
last resources, and even the hounds are less full 
of fire than when they brought him away from 
the covert. I am supposing, of course, that they 
have not changed during the run. You may now 
save many a furlong by bringing your common 
sense into play. What would you do if you were 
a beaten fox, and where would you go ? Certainly 
not across the middle of those large pastures 
where you could be seen by the whole troop of 
your enemies without a chance of shelter or 
repose. No ; you would rather lie down in this 
deep, overgrown ditch, sneak along the back of 
that strong, thick bullfinch, turn short in the 
high, double hedgerow, and so hiding yourself 
from the spiteful crows that would point you out to 
the huntsman, try to baffle alike his experienced 



BIDING TO FOX-HOUNDS 199 

intelligence and the natural sagacity of his 
hounds. Such are but the simplest of the wiles 
practised by this most cunning beast of chase. 
While observing them, you need no further 
distress the favourite who has carried you so 
well than is necessary to render the assistance 
required for finishing satisfactorily with blood ; 
and here your eyes and ears will be far more 
useful than the speed and stamina of your horse. 
Who-whoop! His labours are now over for 
the day. Do not keep him standing half-an-hour 
in the cold, while you smoke a cigar and enlarge 
to sympathising ears on his doings, and yours, 
and theirs, and those of everybody concerned. 
Eather jog gently off as soon as a few compli- 
ments and congratulations have been exchanged, 
and keep him moving at the rate of about six 
miles an hour, so that his muscles may not begin 
to stiffen after his violent exertions, till you have 
got him home. Jump off his honest back, to 
walk up and down the hills with him as they 
come. He well deserves this courtesy at your 
hands. If you ever go out shooting you cannot 
have forgotten the relief it is to put down your 
gun for a minute or two. And even from a 
selfish point of view, there is good reason for this 
forbearance in the ease your own frame experi- 
ences with the change of attitude and exercise. 
If you can get him a mouthful of gruel, it will 
recruit his exhausted vitality, as a basin of soup 



200 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

puts life into a fainting man ; but do not tarry 
more than five or six minutes for your ov;n 
luncheon, while he is sucking it in, and the more 
tired he seems, remember, the sooner you ought 
to get him home. 

If he fails altogether, docs not attempt to trot, 
and wavers from side to side under your weight, 
put him into the first available shelter, and make 
up your mind, however mean the quarters, it is 
better for him to stay there all night than in his 
exhausted condition to be forced back to his own 
stable. With thorough ventilation and plenty of 
coverings, old sacks, blankets, whatever you can 
lay hands on he w^ll take no harm. Indeed, if 
you can keep up his circulation there is no better 
restorative than the pure cold air that in a cow- 
shed, or out-house, finds free admission, to fill his 
lungs. 

You will lose your dinner perhaps. What 
matter ? You may even have to sleep out in 
"the worst inn's worst room," unfed, unwashed, 
and without a change of clothes. It is no such 
penance after all, and surely your first duty is to 
the gallant generous animal that would never 
fail yoit at your need, but would gallop till his 
heart broke, for your mere amusement and caprice- 

Of all our relations with the dumb creation, 
there is none in which man has so entirely the 
best of it as the one-sided partnership that exists 
between the horse and his rider. 



CHAPTEE XII 

BIDING AT STAG-HOUNDS 

I HAVE purposely altered the preposition at the 
heading of this, because it treats of a method 
so entirely different from what I have tried to 
describe in the preceding chapter. At the risk 
of rousing animadversion from an experienced 
and scientific majority, I am prepared to affirm 
that there is nearly as much intelligence and 
knowledge of the animal required to hunt a deer 
as a fox, but in following the chase of the larger 
and higher-scented quadruped there are no fixed 
rules to guide a rider in his course, so that if he 
allows the hounds to get out of sight he may 
gallop over any extent of country till dark, and 
never hear tidings of them again. Therefore it 
has been said, one should ride to foxhounds, but 
at stag-hounds, meaning that with the latter, 
skill and science are of little avail to retrieve a 
mistake. 

Deer, both wild and tame, so long as they are 

201 



202 BIDING BEGOLLECTIONS 

fresh, seem perfectly indifferent whether they 
run up wind or down, although when exhausted 
they turn their heads to the cold air that serves 
to breathe new life into their nostrils. Perhaps, 
if anything, they prefer to feel the breeze blowing 
against their sides, but as to this there is no more 
certainty than in their choice of ground. Other 
wild animals go to the hill ; deer will constantly 
leave it for the vale. I have seen them fly, 
straight as an arrow, across a strongly enclosed 
country, and circle like hares on an open down. 
Sometimes they will not run a yard till the 
hounds are at their very haunches ; sometimes, 
when closely pressed, they become stupid with 
fear, or turn fiercely at bay. "Have we got a 
good deer to-day? " is a question usually answered 
with the utmost confidence, yet how often the 
result is disappointment and disgust. Nor is 
this the case only in the phase of the sport which 
may be termed artificial. A wild stag proudly 
carrying his " brow, bay, and tray " over Exmoor 
seems no less capricious than an astonished hind, 
enlarged amongst the brickfields of Hounslow, 
or the rich pastures that lie outstretched below 
Harrow-on-the-Hill. One creature, familiar 
with every inch of its native wastes, will often 
wander aimlessly in a circle before making its 
point ; the other, not knowing the least where it 
is bound, will as often run perfectly straight for 
miles. 



BIDING AT STAG-HOUNDS 203 

My own experience of "the calf," as it has 
been ignominiously termed, is hmited to three 
packs — Mr. Bissett's, who hunts the perfectly 
wild animal over the moorlands of Somerset and 
North Devon ; Baron Eothschild's, in the Vale of 
Aylesbury; and Lord Wolverton's blood-hounds, 
amongst the combes of Dorsetshire and 
"doubles" of the Blackmoor Vale. With her 
Majesty's hounds I have not been out more than 
three or four times in my life. 

Let us take the noble chase of the West 
country first, as it is followed in glorious autumn 
weather through the fairest scenes that ever 
haunted a painter's dream ; in Horner woods and 
Cloutsham Ball, over the grassy slopes of Exmoor, 
and across the broad expanse of Brendon, spread- 
ing its rich mantle of purple under skies of gold. 
We could dwell for pages on the associations 
connected with such classical names as Badge- 
worthy-water, New-Invention, Mountsey Gate, or 
wooded Glenthorne, rearing its garlanded brows 
above the Severn sea. But we are now concerned 
in the practical question, how to keep a place 
with Mr. Bissett's six-and-twenty inch hounds 
running a warrantable deer over the finest 
scenting country in the world ? 

You may ride at them as like a tailor as you 
please. The ups and downs of a Devonshire 
combe will soon put you in your right place, 
and you wdll be grateful for the most trifling 



204 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

hint that helps yon to spare your horse, and 
remain on any kind of terms with them, on 
ground no less trying to his temper and intelli- 
gence than to his wind and muscular powers. 

Till you attempt to gallop alongside you will 
hardly believe how hard the hounds are running. 
They neither carry such a head, nor dash so 
eagerly, I might almost say jealously, for the 
scent as if they were hunting their natural 
quarry, the fox. This difference I attribute 
to the larger size, and consequently stronger 
odour, of a deer. Every hound enjoying his 
full share, none are tempted to rob their 
comrades of the mysterious pleasure, and we 
therefore miss the quick, sharp turns and the 
drive that we are accustomed to consider so 
characteristic of the fox-hounds. They string, 
too, in long-drawn line, because of the tall, 
bushy heather, necessitating great size and 
power, through which they must make their 
way ; but, nevertheless, they keep swinging 
steadily on, without a check or hover for many 
a mile of moorland, showing something of that 
fierce indomitable perseverance attributed by 
Byron to the wolf — 

" With his long gallop that can tire 
The hound's deep hate and hunter's fire." 

If you had a second Eclipse under you, and 



BIDING AT STAG-HOUNDS 205 

rode him fairly with them, yard for yard, you 
would stop in less than twenty minutes ! 

Yet old practitioners, notably that prince of 
sportsmen the Eev. John Eussell, contrive to 
see runs of many hours' duration without so 
entirely exhausting their horses but that they 
can travel some twenty miles home across the 
moor. Such men as Mr. Granville Somerset, 
the late Mr. Dene of Barnstaple, Mr. Bissett 
himself, though weighing twenty stone, and a 
score of others — for in the West good sportsmen 
are the rule, not the exception — go well from 
find to finish of these long, exhausting chases, 
yet never trespass too far on the generosity and 
endurance of the noble animal that carries them 
to the end. And why? Because they take 
pains, use their heads sagaciously, their hands 
skilfully, and their heels scarcely at all. To 
their experience I am indebted for the following 
little hints which I have found serviceable when 
embarked on those wide, trackless wastes, brown, 
endless, undulating, and spacious as the sea. 

There are happily no fences, and the chief 
obstructions to be defeated, or rather negotiated, 
are the "combes " — a succession of valleys that 
trend upward from the shallow streams to the 
heathery ridges, narrowing as they ascend till 
lost in the level surface of the moor. Never go 
down into these until your deer is sinking. So 
surely as you descend will you have to climb the 



206 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

opposite rise ; rather keep round them towards 
the top, watching the hounds while they thread 
a thousand intricacies of rock, heather, and 
scattered copse-wood, so as to meet them 
when they emerge, Vv'hich they will surely do 
on the upper level, for it is the nature of their 
quarry to rise the hill aslant, and seek safety, 
when pressed, in its speed across the flat. 

A deer descends these declivities one after 
another as they come, but it is for the refresh- 
ment of a bath in their waters below, and 
instinct prompts it to return without delay to 
higher ground when thus invigorated. Only 
if completely beaten and exhausted, does it 
become so confused as to attempt scaling a 
rise in a direct line. The run is over then, 
and you may turn your horse's head to the 
wind, for in a furlong or two the game will 
falter and come down again amongst its pur- 
suers to stand at bay. 

Coast your combes, therefore, judiciously, and 
spare your horse ; so shall you cross the heather 
in thorough enjoyment of the chase till it leads 
you perhaps to the grassy swamps of Exmoor, 
the most plausible line in the world, over which 
hounds run their hardest — and now look out ! 

If Exmoor were in Leicestershire, it would be 
called a bog, and cursed accordingly, but every 
country has its own peculiarities, and a North 
Devon sportsman more especially, on a horse 



BIDING AT STAG-HOUNDS 207 

whose dam, or even grandam, was bred on the 
moor, seems to flap his way across it with as 
much confidence as a bittern or a curlew. 
Could I discover how he accomplished this 
feat I would tell you, but I can only advise 
you to ride his line and follow him yard for yard. 

There are certain sound tracks and pathways, 
no doubt, in which a horse does not sink more 
than fetlock deep, and Mr. Knight, the lord of 
the soil, may be seen, on a large handsome 
thorough-bred hunter, careering away as close 
to the pack as he used to ride in the Yale of 
Aylesbury, but for a stranger so to presume 
would be madness, and if he did not find him- 
self bogged in half a minute, he would stop his 
horse in half a mile. 

Choose a pilot then, Mr. Granville Somerset 
w^e will say, or one of the gentlemen I have 
already named, and stick to him religiously 
till the welcome heather is brushing your 
stirrup-irons once more. On Brendon, you 
may ride for yourself with perfect confidence 
in the face of all beholders, bold and con- 
spicuous as Dunkery Beacon, but on Exmoor 
you need not be ashamed to play follow my 
leader. Only give him room enough to fall ! 

As, although a full-grown or warrantable stag 
is quickly found, the process of separating it 
from its companions, called "tufting," is a long- 
business, lasting for hours, you will be wise to 



208 BIDING BEGOLLECTIONS 

take with you a feed of corn and a rope halter, 
the latter of which greatly assists in serving 
your horse with the former. You will find it 
also a good plan to have your saddles previously 
well stuffed and repaired, lined with smooth 
linen. The weather in August is very hot, 
and your horse will be many hours under your 
weight, therefore it is well to guard against 
a sore back. Jump off, too, whenever you have 
the chance ; a hunter cannot but find it a 
delightful relief to get rid of twelve or thirteen 
stone bumping all day against his spine for a 
minute or two at a time. I have remarked, 
however, with some astonishment that the 
heavier the rider the more averse he seems to 
granting this indulgence, and am forced to 
suppose his unwillingness to get down pro- 
ceeds, as my friend Mr. Grimston says, from a 
difficulty in getting up again ! This gentleman, 
however, who, notwithstanding his great weight, 
has always ridden perfectly straight to hounds, 
over the stiffest of grass countries, obstinately 
declines to leave the saddle at any time under 
less provocation than a complete turn over by 
the strength of a gate or stile. 

To mention " the Honourable Robert " brings 
one by an irresistible association of ideas into 
the wide pastures of that grassy paradise which 
mortals call the Vale of Aylesbury. Here, under 
the excellent management of Sir Nathaniel 



BIDING AT STAG-HOUNDS 209 

Eothschild, assisted by his brother Mr. Leo- 
pold, the carted deer is hunted on the most 
favourable terms, and a sportsman must indeed 
be prejudiced who will not admit that ten mile 
points over grass with one of the handsomest 
packs of hounds in the world, are most enjoy- 
able ; the object of chase, when the fun is over, 
returning to Mentmore, like a gentleman, in his 
own carriage, notwithstanding. 

Fred Cox is the picture of a huntsman. Mark 
Howcott, his whip, fears nothing in the shape 
of a fence, and will close with a wicked stag, in 
or out of water, as readily as a policeman collars 
a pickpocket ! The horses are superb, and so 
they ought to be, for the fences that divide this 
grazing district into fields of eighty and a 
hundred acres grow to the most formidable size 
and strength. Unless brilliantly mounted 
neither masters nor servants could hold the 
commanding position through a run that they 
always seem to desire. 

In riding to these hounds, as to all others it 
is advisable to avoid the crowd. Many of the 
hedgerows are double, with a ditch on each side, 
and to wait for your turn amongst a hundred 
horsemen, some too bold, some too cautious, 
would entail such delay as must prove fatal 
with a good scent. Happily, there are plenty 
of gates, and a deer preferring timber to any 
other leap, usually selects this convenient mode 

14 



210 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

of transit. Should they be chained, look for a 
weak place in the fence, which, being double, 
will admit of subdividing your leap by two, and 
your chance of a fall by ten. 

At first you may be somewhat puzzled on 
entering a field to find your way out. I will 
suppose that in other countries you have been 
accustomed to select the easiest place at once 
in the fence you are approaching, and to make 
for it without delay, but across these large fields 
the nature of an obstacle deceives your eye. 
The two contiguous hedges that form one 
boundary render it very difficult to determine 
at a distance where the easiest place is, so you 
will find it best to follow the hounds, and take 
your chance. The deer, like your horse, is a 
large quadruped, and, except under unusual 
circumstances, where one goes the other can 
probably follow. 

This, I fear, is a sad temptation to ride on the 
line of hounds. If you give way to it, let the 
whole pack be at least two or three hundred 
yards in front, and beware, even then, of tail 
hounds coming up to join their comrades. 

Be careful also, never to jump a fence in your 
stride till you see the pack well into the next 
field. A deer is very apt to drop lightly over 
a wall or upright hedge just high enough to 
conceal it, and then turn short at a right angle 
under his convenient screen. It would be 



BIDING AT STAG-HOUNDS 211 

painful to realise your feelings, poised in air 
over eight or ten couple of priceless hounds, 
with a chorus of remonstrances storming in 
the rear ! It is no use protesting you "Didn't 
touch them," you "Didn't mean it," you "Never 
knew they were there." Better ride doggedly 
on, over the largest places you can find, and 
apologise humbly to everybody at the first 
check. 

When a fox goes down to water he means 
crossing, not so the deer. If at all tired, or 
heated, it may stay there for an hour. On 
such occasions, therefore, you can take a pull 
at your horse and your flask too if you like, 
while you look for the best way to the other 
side. When induced to leave it, however, the 
animal seems usually so refreshed by its bath 
as to travel a long distance, and on this, as on 
many other occasions in stag-hunting, the run 
seems only beginning, when you and your horse 
consider it ought to be nearly over. 

Directly you observe a deer, that has hitherto 
gone straight, describing a series of circles, you 
may think about going home. 

It is tired at last, and will give you no more 
fun for a month. You should offer assistance 
to the men, and, even if it be not accepted, 
remain, as a matter of courtesy, to see your 
quarry properly taken, and sent back to the 
paddock in its cart. 



212 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

With all stag-hounds, the same rules would 
seem to apply. Never care to view it, and 
above all, unless expressly requested to do so 
for a reason, avoid the solecism of "riding the 
deer." On the mode in which this sport is 
conducted depends the whole difference between 
a wild exhilarating pastime and a tame unin- 
teresting parade. Though prejudice will not 
allow it is the real thing, we cannot but admit 
the excellence of the imitation, and a man must 
possess a more logical mind, a less excitable 
temperament, than is usually allotted to 
sportsmen, who can remember, while sailing 
along with hounds running hard over a flying 
country, that he is only "trying to catch what 
he had already," and has turned a handsome 
hairy-coated quadruped out of a box for the 
mere purpose of putting it in again when the 
fun is over ! 

Follow every turn then, religiously, and with 
good intent. You came out expressly to enjoy 
a gallop, do not allow yourself to be disap- 
pointed. If nerve and horse are good enough, 
go into every field wdth them, but, I intreat you, 
ride like a sportsman, and give the hounds plenty 
of room. 

This last injunction more especially applies 
to that handsome pack of black-and-tans with 
which Lord Wolverton, during the last five or 
six seasons, has shown extraordinary sport for 



BIDING AT STAG-HOUNDS 213 

the amusement of his neighbours on the uplands 
of Dorset and in the green pastures that enrich 
the valley of the Stour. These blood-hounds, 
for such they are, and of the purest breed, stand 
seven or eight-and-twenty inches, with limbs 
and frames proportioned to so gigantic a stature. 
Their heads are magnificent, solemn sagacious 
eyes, pendent jowls, and flapping ears that brush 
away the dew. Thanks to his Lordship's care 
in breeding, and the freedom with which he has 
drafted, their feet are round and their powerful 
legs symmetrically straight. A spirited and 
truly artistic picture of these hounds in chase, 
sweeping like a whirlwind over the downs, by 
Mr. Goddard, the well-known painter, hangs 
on Lord Wolverton's staircase in London, and 
conveys to his guests, particularly after dinner, 
so vivid an idea of their picturesque and even 
sporting qualities as I cannot hope to represent 
with humble pen and ink. 

One could almost fancy, standing opposite 
this masterpiece, that one heard the cry. Full, 
sonorous, and musical, it is not extravagant to 
compare these deep-mouthed notes with the peal 
of an organ in a cathedral. 

Yet they run a tremendous pace. Stride, 
courage, and condition (the last essential requir- 
ing constant care) enable them to sustain such 
speed over the open as can make a good horse 
look foolish ! While, amongst enclosures, they 



214 BIDING BECOLLEGTIONS 

charge the fences in line, like a squadron of 
heavy dragoons. 

Yet for all this fire and mettle in chase, they 
are sad cowards under pressure from a crowd. A 
whip cracked hurriedly, a horse galloping in their 
track, even an injudicious rate, will make the best 
of them shy and sulky for half the day. Only by 
thorough knowledge of his favourites and patient 
deference to their prejudices, has Lord Wolver- 
ton obtained their confidence, and it is wonderful 
to mark how his perseverance is rewarded. 
While he hunts them they are perfectly handy, 
and turn like a pack of harriers ; but if an out- 
sider attempts to " cap them on," or otherwise 
interfere, they decline to acknowledge him from 
the first ; and should they be left to his guidance, 
are quite capable of going straight home at once, 
with every mark of contempt. 

In a run, however, their huntsman is seldom 
wanting. His lordship has an extraordinary knack 
of galloping, getting across a field with surprising 
quickness on every horse he rides, and is not 
to be turned by the fence when he reaches it, 
so that his hounds are rarely placed in the 
awkward position of a pack at fault with no one 
to look to for assistance. He has acquired, too, 
considerable familiarity with the habits of his 
game, and has a holy horror of going home 
without it, so perseveres, when at a loss, through 
many a long hour of cold hunting, slotting, 



BIDING AT STAG-HOUNDS 215 

scouring the country for information, and other 
drawbacks to enjoyment of his chase. As he 
says himself, " The worst of a deer is, you can't 
leave off when you like. Nobody will believe 
you if you swear it went to ground! " 

Part of the country in his immediate neigh- 
bourhood seems made for stag-hunting. Large 
fields, easy slopes, light fences, and hght land, 
with here and there a hazel copse, bordering a 
stretch for three or four miles of level turf, like 
Launceston Down, or Blandford race-course, 
must needs tempt a deer to go straight no less 
than a horseman, but the animal, as I have said, 
is unaccountably capricious, and if we could 
search his lordship's diary I believe we should 
find his best runs have taken place over a 
district differing in every respect from the above. 

As soon as the leaves are fallen sufficiently to 
render the Blackmoor Yale rideable, it is his 
greatest pleasure to take the blood-hounds down 
to those deep, level, and strongly-enclosed 
pastures, over which, notwithstanding the size 
and nature of the fences, he finds his deer 
(usually hinds) run remarkably well, and make 
extraordinary points. Ten miles, on the 
ordnance map, is no unusual distance, and 
is often accomplished in little more than an 
hour. For men who enjoy riding I can con- 
ceive no better fun. Not an acre of plough is 
to be seen. The enclosures, perhaps, are rather 



216 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

small, but this only necessitates more jmnping, 
and the fences may well satisfy the hungriest, 
or as an Irishman would say, the thirstiest, of 
competitors ! They are not, however, quite so 
formidable as they look. To accomplish two 
blind ditches, with a bank between, and a hedge 
thereon, requires indeed discretion in a horse, 
and cool determination in its rider, but where 
these exist the large leap is divided easily by 
two, and a good man, Vv4io means going, is not 
often to be pounded, even in the Blackmoor 
Vale. 

Nothing is quite perfect under the sun, not 
your own best hunter, nor your wife's last baby, 
and the river Stour, winding through them in 
every direction, somewhat detracts from the 
merit of these happiest of hunting-grounds. A 
good friend to the deer, and a sad hindrance 
to its pursuers, it has spoilt many a fine run; 
but even with this drawback there are few 
districts in any part of England so naturally 
adapted to the pleasures of the chase. The 
population is scanty, the countrymen are enthu- 
siasts, the farmers the best fellows on earth, the 
climate seems unusually favourable ; from the 
kindness and courtesy of Sir Richard Glynn and 
Mr. Portman, who pursue the legitimate sport 
over the same locality, and his own personal 
popularity, the normal difficulties of his under- 
taking are got over in favour of the noble 



BIDING AT STAG-HOUNDS 217 

master, and everybody seems equally pleased 
to welcome the green plush coats and the good 
grey horses in the midst of the black-and-tans. 

If I were sure of a fine morning and a safe 
mount, I would ask for no keener pleasure than 
an hour's gallop with Lord Wolverton's blood- 
hounds over the Blackmoor Yale. 



CHAPTEE XIII 

THE PROVINCES 

A DISTINGUISHED soldier of the present day, 
formerly as daring and enthusiastic a rider as 
ever charged his "oxers" with the certainty 
of a fall, was once asked in my hearing by a 
mild stranger, " Whether he had been out 
with the Crawley and Horsham ? " if I re- 
member right. 

"No, sir!" was the answer, delivered in a 
tone that somewhat startled the querist, "I 
have never hunted with any hounds in my 
life but the Quorn and the Pytchley, and I'll 
take d d good care I never do ! " 

Now I fancy that not a few of our " golden 
youth," who are either born to it, or have 
contrived in their own way to get the " silver 
spoon" into their mouths, are under the im- 
pression that all hunting must necessarily be 
dead slow if conducted out of Leicestershire, 
and that little sport, with less excitement, is to 

218 



THE PBOVINCES 219 

be obtained in those remote regions which they 
contemptuously term the provinces. 

There never was a greater fallacy. If we 
calculate the number of hours hounds are out 
of kennel (for we must remember that the 
Quorn and Belvoir put two days into one), 
we shall find, I think, that they run hard for 
fewer minutes, in proportion, across the fashion- 
able countries than in apparently less-favoured 
districts concealed at sundry out-of-the-way 
corners of the kingdom. 

Nor is this disparity difficult to understand. 
Fox-hunting at its best is a wild sport ; the 
wilder the better. Where coverts are many 
miles apart, where the animal must travel for its 
food, where agriculture is conducted on primi- 
tive principles that do not necessitate the 
huntsman's horror, " a man in every field," 
the fox retains all his savage nature, and is 
prepared to run any distance, face every 
obstacle, rather than succumb to his relentless 
enemy, the hound. He has need, and he seems 
to know it, of all his courage and all his 
sagacity, as compelled to fight alone on his 
own behalf, without assistance from that invalu- 
able ally, the crowd. 

A score of hard riders, nineteen of whom are 
jealous, and the twentieth determined not to be 
beat, forced on by a hundred comrades all eager 
for the view and its stentorian proclamation, 



220 RIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

may well save the life of any fox on earth, with 
scarce an effort from the animal itself. But that 
hounds are creatures of habit, and huntsmen in 
the flying countries miracles of patience, no less 
than their masters, not a nose would be nailed 
on the kennel-door, after cub-hunting was over, 
from one end of the shires to the other. 

Nothing surprises me so much as to see a 
pack of hounds, like the Belvoir or the Quorn, 
come up through a crowd of horses and stick to 
the line of their fox, or fling gallantly forward 
to recover it, without a thought of personal 
danger or the slightest misgiving that not one 
man in ten is master of the two pair of hoofs 
beneath him, carrying death in every shoe. 
Were they not bred for the make-and-shape 
that gives them speed no less than for fineness 
of nose, but especially for that dash which, like 
all victorious qualities, leaves something to 
chance, they could never get a field from the 
covert. It docs happen, however, that, now 
and again, a favourable stroke of fortune puts 
a couple of furlongs between the hounds and 
their pursuers. A hundred-acre field of well 
saturated grass lies before them, down go their 
noses, out go their sterns, and away they scour, 
a,t a pace which makes a precious example of 
young Eapid on a first-class steeple-chase horse 
with the wrong bridle in its mouth. 

But how differently is the same sport being 



THE PROVINCES 221 

carried out in his father's country, perhaps by 
the old gentleman's own pack, with which the 
young one considers it slow to hunt. 

Let us begin at the beginning and try to 
imagine a good day in the provinces, about the 
third week in November, when leaves are thin 
and threadbare on the fences, while copse and 
woodland glisten under subdued shafts of sun- 
light in sheets of yellow gold. 

What says Mr. Warburton, favoured of Diana 
and the Muses ? 

" The dew-drop is clinging 
To whin-bush and brake, 
The sky-lark is singing, 
Merry hunters, awake ! 
Home to the cover, 
Deserted by night, 
The little red rover 
Is bending his flight — " 

Could words more stirringly describe the hope 
and promise, the joy, the vitality, the buoyant 
exhilaration of a hunting morning ? 

So the little red rover, who has travelled half 
a dozen miles for his supper, returns to find he 
has "forgotten his latch-key," and curls him- 
self up in some dry, warm nook amongst the 
brushwood, at the quietest corner of a deep, 
precipitous ravine. 

Here, while sleep favours digestion, he makes 



222 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

himself very comfortable, and dreams, no doubt, 
of his own pleasures and sucesses in pursuit of 
prey. Presently, about half-past eleven, he 
wakes with a start, leaps out of bed, shakes his 
fur, and stands to listen, a perfect picture, with 
one pad raised and his cunning head aslant. 
Yes, he recognised it from the first. The " Yooi, 
wind him, and rouse him ! " of old Matthew's 
mellow tones, not unknown in a gin-and-water 
chorus when occasion warrants the convivial 
brew, yet clear, healthy, and resonant at the 
very roar of Challenger, who has just proclaimed 
his consciousness of the drag, some five hours old. 

'Tis an experienced rover, and does not 
hesitate for an instant. Stealing down the 
ravine, he twists his agile little body through 
a tangled growth of blackthorn and brambles, 
crosses the stream dry-footed with a leap, and, 
creeping through the fence that bounds his 
stronghold, peers into the meadow beyond. No 
smart and busy v/hip has " clapped forward " to 
view and head him. Matthew, indeed, brings out 
but one, and swears he could do better without 
Jdm. So the rover puts his sharp nose straight 
for the solitude he loves, and whisking his brush 
defiantly, resolves to make his point. 

He has been gone five minutes when the 
clamour of the find reaches his ears, twice that 
time ere the hounds are fairly out of covert on 
his line ; so, with a clear head and a bold heart. 



THE PBOVINCES 223 

he has leisure to consider his tactics and to 
remember the main earth at Crag's-end in the 
forest, twelve miles off as the crow flies. 

Challenger, and Charmer his progeny, crash 
out of the wood together, fairly howling with 
ecstasy as their busy noses meet the rich tufted 
herbage, dewy, dank, and tainted with the 
maddening odour that affords such uncontrolled 
enjoyment. " Harve art him, my lards ! " 
exclaims old Matthew, in Doric accents, 
peculiar to the kennel. ''Come up, horse!" 
and, having admonished that faithful servant 
with a dig in the ribs from his horn, blows half- 
a-dozen shrill blasts in quick succession, sticks 
the instrument, I shudder to confess it, in his 
boot, and proceeds to hustle his old white nag at 
the best pace he can command in the wake of 
his favourites. " Dang it ! they're off," exclaims 
a farmer, who had stationed himself on the crest 
of the hill, diving, at a gallop, down a stony 
darkling lane, overgrown with alder, brambles, 
honeysuckle, all the garden produce of uncul- 
tivated nature, lush and steaming in decay. 
The field, consisting of the Squire, three or 
four strapping yeomen, a parson, and a boy on a 
pony, follow his example, and making a good 
turn in the valley, find themselves splashing 
through a ghttering, shallow streamlet, still in 
the lane, with the hounds not a bowshot from 
them on the right. 



224 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

"And pace?" inquires young Eapid, when 
his father describes the run to him on Christmas- 
eve. " Of course you had no pace with so good 
a point? " 

"Pace, sir!" answers the indignant parent ; 
"my hounds run because they can hunt. I tell 
you, they were never off the line for an hour and 
three-quarters ! Matthew would try to cast 
them once, and very nearly lost his fox, but 
Charmer hit it off on the other side of the 
combe and put us right. He's as like old Chal- 
lenger as he can stick ; a deal more like than 
you are to 7«e." 

Young Eapid concedes the point readily, and 
the Squire continues his narrative : "I had but 
eighteen couple out, because of a run the week 
before — I'll tell you about it presently, — five- 
and-thirty minutes on the hills, and a kill in the 
open, that lamed half the pack amongst the 
flints. You talk of pace — they went fast enough 
to have settled the best of you, I'll warrant ! 
but I'm getting off the line — I've not done with 
the other yet. I never saw hounds work better. 
They came away all together, they hunted their 
fox like a cluster of bees ; swarming over every 
field, and every fence, they brought him across 
Tinglebury Tor, where it's always as dry as that 
hearthstone, through a flock of five hundred 
sheep, they rattled him in and out of Combe- 
Bampton, though the Lower Woods were alive 



THE PBOVINCES 225 

with riou — hares, roe, fallow-deer, hang it ! apes 
and peacocks if you like ; had old Matthew not 
been a fool they would never have hesitated for 
a moment, and when they ran into him under 
Crag's-end, there wasn't a man-jack of them 
missing. Not one — that's what I call a pack of 
hounds ! 

" The best part of it? So much depends on 
whether you young fellows go out to hunt, or to 
ride. For the first half -hour or so we were never 
off the grass — there's not a ploughed field all the 
way up the valley till you come to Shifner's 
allotments, orchard and meadow, meadow and 
orchard, fetlock-deep in grass, even at this time 
of year. Why, it carries a side-scent, like the 
heather on a moor ! I suppose you'd have 
called that the best part. I didn't, though I 
saw it well from the lane with Matthew and the 
rest of us, all but the Yicar, who went into every 
field with the hounds — I thought he was rather 
hard on them amongst those great blind, tangled 
fences ; but he's such a good fellow, I hadn't 
the heart to holloa at him — it's very wrong 
though, and a man in his profession ought to 
know better. 

'' I can't say they checked exactly in the 
allotments, but the manure and rubbish, weeds 
burning, and what-not, brought them to their 
noses. That's where Matthew made such a 
fool of himself ; but, as I told you. Charmer 

15 



S26 BIDING BEGOLLEGTIONS 

put US all right. The fox had crossed into 
Combe-Bampton and was rising the hill for the 
downs. 

"I never saw hounds so patient — they could 
but just hold a line over the chalk — first one and 
then another puzzled it out, till they got on 
better terms in Hazlewood Hanger, and when 
they ran down into the valley again between the 
cliffs there was a cry it did one's heart good to 
hear. 

" I had a view of him, crossing Parker's Piece, 
the long strip of waste land, you know, under 
Craven Clump ; and he seemed as fresh as you 
are now — I sat as mute as a mouse, for six-and 
thirty tongues were at work that never told a 
lie. The Yicar gave them plenty of room by 
this time, and all our horses seemed to have had 
about enough ! 

"'I wish we mayn't have changed in the 
Hanger,' said Matthew, refreshing the old grey 
with a side-binder, as they blundered into the 
lane, but I knew better — he had run the rides, 
every yard, and that made me hope we should 
have him in hand before long. 

" It began to get very interesting, I was near 
enough to watch each hound doing his work, 
eighteen couple, all dogs, three and four season 
hunters, for I hadn't a single puppy out. I wish 
you had been there, my boy. It was a real 
lesson in hunting, and I'll tell you what I 



THE PBOVINCES 227 

thought of them, one by . Hulloh! Yes. 

You'd better ring for coffee — Hanged if I don't 
believe you've been fast asleep all the time ! " 

But such runs as these, though wearisome to 
a listener, are most enjoyable for those who can 
appreciate the steadiness and sagacity of the 
hound, no less than the craft and courage of the 
animal it pursues. There is an indescribable 
charm too, in what I may call the romance of 
hunting — the remote scenes we should perhaps 
never visit for their own sake, the broken sun- 
light glinting through copse and gleaming on 
fern, the woodland sights, the woodland sounds, 
the balmy odours of nature, and all the treats 
she provides for her votaries, tasted and enjoyed, 
with every faculty roused, every sense sharpened 
in the excitement of our pursuit. These delights 
are better known in the provinces than the 
shires, and to descend from flights of fancy to 
practical matters of £ s. d., we can hunt in the 
former at comparatively trifling expense. 

In the first place, particularly if good horse- 
men, we need not be nearly so well-mounted. 
There are few provincial countries in which a 
man who knows how to ride, cannot get from 
one field to another, by hook or by crook, with a 
little creeping and scrambling and blundering, 
that come far short of the casualty we deprecate 
as a rattling fall ! His horse must be in good 
condition of course, and able to gallop ; also if 



228 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

temperate, the more willing at his fences the 
better, but it is not indispensable that he should 
possess the stride and power necessary to cover 
some twenty feet of distance, and four or five 
of height, at every leap, nor the blood that can 
alone enable him to repeat the exertion, over 
and over again, at three-quarter speed in deep 
ground. To jump, as it is called, from field to 
field, tries a horse's stamina no less severely 
than his courage, while, as I have already ob- 
served, there is no such economy of effort, and 
even danger, as to make two small fences out of 
a large one. 

I do not mean to say that there are any parts 
of England where, if hounds run hard, a hunter, 
with a workman on his back, has not enough to 
do to live with them, but I do consider that 
cceteris paribus, a good rider may smuggle a 
moderate horse over most of our provincial 
countries, whereas he would be helpless on the 
same animal in Leicestershire or Northampton- 
shire. There, on the other hand, an inferior 
horseman, bold enough to place implicit confi- 
dence in the first-class hunter he rides, may see 
a run, from end to end, with considerable credit 
and enjoyment, by the simple process of keeping 
a good hold of his bridle, while he leaves every- 
thing to the horse. But he must not have 
learned a single letter of the noble word "Funk." 
Directly his heart fails, and he interferes, down 



THE PROVINCES 229 

they both come, an imperial crowner, and the 
game is lost ! 

Many of our provincial districts are also calcu- 
lated, from their very nature, to turn out expe- 
rienced sportsmen no less than accomplished 
riders. In large woods, amongst secluded hills, 
or wild tracts of moor intersected by imprac- 
ticable ravines, a lover of the chase is compelled 
by force of circumstances to depend on his own 
eyes, ears, and general intelligence for his 
amusement. 

He finds no young Eapid to pilot him over the 
large places, if he means going ; no crafty band 
of second-horsemen to guide him in safety to 
the finish, if his ambition is satisfied with a 
distant and occasional view of the stirring 
pageant ; no convenient hand-gate in the corner, 
no friendly bridge across the stream ; above all, 
no hurrying cavalcade drawn out for miles, 
amongst which to hide, and with whom plea- 
santly to compare notes hereafter in those self- 
deceiving moments, when 

" Dined, o'er our claret, we talk of the merit. 
Of every choice spirit that rode in the run. 
But here the crowd. Sir, can talk just as loud, Sir, 
As those who were forward enjoying the fun 1 " 

No. In the provinces our young sportsman must 
make up his mind to take his own part, to study 
the coverts drawn, and find out for himself the 



230 RIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

points where he can see, hear, and, so to speak, 
command hounds till they go away ; must learn 
how to rise the hill with least labour, and 
descend it with greatest dispatch, how to thread 
glen, combe, or dale, wind in and out of the 
rugged ravine, plunge through a morass, and 
make his way home at night across trackless 
moor, or open storm-swept down. By the time 
he has acquired these accomplishments, the 
horsemanship will have come of itself. He will 
know how to bore where he cannot jump, to 
creep where he must not fly, and so manage his 
horse that the animal seems to share the inten- 
tions and intelligence of its rider. 

If he can afford it, and likes to spend a season 
or two in the shires for the last superlative 
polish, let him go and welcome ! He will be 
taught to get clear of a crowd, to leap timber 
at short notice, to put on his boots and breeches, 
and that is about all there is left for him to 
learn ! 

In the British army, though more than a 
hundred regiments constitute the line, each 
cherishes its own particular title, while applying 
that general application indiscriminately to the 
rest. 

I imagine the same illusion affects the 
provinces, and I should offend an incalculable 
number of good fellows and good sportsmen, 
were I to describe as provincial establishments, 



THE PBOVINCES 231 

the variety of hunts, north, south, east, and 
west, with which I have enjoyed so much good 
company and good fun. Each has its own claim 
to distinction, some have collars, all have sport. 

Grass, I imagine, is the one essential that 
constitutes pre-eminence in a hunting country, 
and for this the shires have always boasted they 
bear away the palm, but it will surprise many of 
my readers to be told that in the south and west 
there are districts where this desideratum seems 
now more plentiful than in the middle of Eng- 
land. The Blackmoor Yale still lies almost 
wholly under pasture, and you may travel to-day 
forty miles by rail, through the counties of 
Dorset and Somerset, in general terms nearly 
from Blandford to Bath, without seeing a 
ploughed field. 

What a country might here be made by 
such an enthusiast as poor " Sam Eeynell," 
who found Meath without a gorse-covert, and 
drew between thirty and forty sure finds in it 
before he died ! 

Independently of duty, which ought to be 
our first consideration, there is also great 
convenience in hunting from home. We require 
no large stud, can choose our meets, and, above 
all, are indifferent to weather. A horse comes 
out so many times in a season ; if we don't 
hunt to-day we shall next week. Compare this 
equable frame of mind with the irritation and 



232 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

impatience of a man who has ten hunters 
standing at the sign of "The Hand-in-Pocket," 
while he inhabits the front parlour, without his 
books, deprived of his usual society and occu- 
pations, the barometer at set fair, and the 
atmosphere affording every indication of a six- 
weeks' frost ! 

Let us see in what the charm consists that 
impels people to encounter bad food, bad wine, 
bad lodgings, and above all, protracted boredom, 
for a campaign in those historical hunting- 
grounds, that have already seemed to constitute 
the rosiest illusion of a sportsman's dream. 



CHAPTEK XIY 

THE SHIBES 

" Every species of fence every horse doesn't suit, 
What's a good country hunter may here prove a brute," 

Sings that clerical bard who wrote the Billesdon- 
Coplow poem, from which I have already quoted; 
and it would be difficult to explain more tersely 
than do these two lines the difference between 
a fair useful hunter, and the flyer we call ^jar 
excellence " a Leicestershire horse ! " 

Alas ! for the favourite unrivalled over 
Gloucestershire walls, among Dorsetshire 
doubles, in the level ploughs of Holderness, 
or up and down the wild Derbyshire hills, 
when called upon to gallop, we will say, from 
Ashby pastures to the Coplow, after a week's 
rain, at Quorn pace, across Quorn fences, unless 
he happens to possess with the speed of the 
steeple-chaser, the courage of a lion and the 
activity of a cat ! For the first mile or two 

233 



234 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

''pristine virtutis haud immemor " he bears 
him gallantly enough, even the unaccustomed 
rail on the far side of an " oxer," elicits but 
a startling exertion, and a loud rattle of horn 
and iron against wood, but ere long the slope 
rises against him, the ridge-and-furrow checks 
his stride, a field, dotted with ant-hills as large 
as church-hassocks and not unlike them in 
shape, to catch his toes and impede his action, 
changes his smooth easy swing to a laborious 
flounder, and presently at a thick bullfinch on 
the crest of a grassy ridge, out of ground that 
takes him in nearly to his hocks, comes the 
crisis. Too good a hunter to turn over, he gets 
his shoulders out and lets his rider see the fall 
before it is administered, but down he goes not- 
withstanding, very effectually, to rise again after 
a struggle, his eye wild, nostril distended, and 
flanks heaving, thoroughly pumped out ! 

He is a good horse, but you have brought 
him into the wrong country, and this is the 
result. 

It would be a hopeless task to extract from 
young Eapid's laconic phrases, and general 
indifference, any particulars regarding the burst 
in which, to give him his due, he has gone 
brilliantly, or the merits of the horse that carried 
him in the first flight without a mistake. He 
wastes his time, his money, his talents, but 
not his words. For him and his companionSj 



THE SHIBES 235 

question and answer are cut short somewhat in 
this wise : — 

"Did 3^ou get away with them from the 
Punch-bowl ? " 

" Yes, I was among the hicky ones." 

''Is, 'The King of the Golden Mines' any 
use?" 

" I fancy he is good enough." 

And 5^et he is reflecting on the merits of 
Self and Co. with no little satisfaction, and does 
not grudge one shilling of the money — a hundred 
down, and a bill for two hundred and fifty — that 
the horse w4th the magnificent name cost him 
last spring. 

Their performance, I admit, does them both 
credit. I will endeavour to give a rough sketch 
of the somewhat hazardous amusement that puts 
him out of conceit with the sport shown by his 
father's hounds. 

Let us picture to ourselves then, Eapid 
junior, resplendent in the whitest of breeches 
and brightest of boots, with a single-breasted, 
square-cut scarlet coat, a sleek hat curly of brim, 
four feet of cane hunting-whip in his hand, a 
flower at his breast, and a toothpick in his mouth, 
replaced by an enormous cigar as somebody he 
doesn't know suggests they are not likely to find. 
Though he looks so helpless, and more than half- 
asleep, he is wide-awake enough in fact, and 
dashes the weed unlighted from his lips, when 



236 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

he spies the huntsman stand up in his stirrups 
as though on the watch. There hn^ks a fund of 
latent energy under the placidity of our friend's 
demeanour, and, as four couple of hounds come 
streaming out of cover, he shoots up the bank 
rather too near them, to pick his place without 
hesitation in an ugly bullfinch at the top. Two 
of his own kind are making for the same spot at 
the same moment, and our young friend shows 
at such a crisis, that he knows how to ride. 
Taking '' The King of the Golden Mines," hard 
by the head, he changes his aim on the instant, 
and rams the good horse at four feet of strong 
timber, leaning towards him, with an energy not 
to be denied. Over they go triumphantly. The 
King, half affronted, catching hold with some 
resentment, as he settles vigorously to his stride. 
What matter ? most of the pack are already 
half-way across the next field, for Leicestershire 
hounds have an extraordinary knack of flying 
forward to overtake their comrades. His father 
would be delighted with the performance, and 
would call it *' scoring to cry," but young Kapid 
does not trouble himself about such matters. He 
is only glad to find they are out of his way, and 
thinks no more about it, except to rejoice that 
he can put the steam on, without the usual 
remonstrance from huntsman and master. 

The King can gallop like a race-horse, and is 
soon at the next leap — a wide ditch, a high 



THE SHIBES 237 

staked-and-bound hedge, coarse, rough and 
strong, with a drop and what you please, on the 
other side. This last treat proves to be a bowed- 
out oak- rail, standing four feet from the fence. 
The King, full of courage, and going fast, bounds 
over the whole with his hind legs tucked under 
him like a deer, ready, but not requiring, to 
strike back, while two of Rapid's young friends 
with whom he dined yesterday, and one he will 
meet at dinner to-day, fly it in similar form, 
nearly alongside. An ugly, overgrown bullfinch, 
with a miniature ravine, or, as it is here called, 
a bottom, appears at the foot of the hill they are 
now descending, and, as there seems only one 
practicable place, these four reckless individuals at 
once begin to race for the desirable spot. The 
King's turn of speed serves him again ; covering 
five- or six-and-twenty feet, he leaps it a length 
in front of the nearest horse, and a couple of 
strides before the other two, while loud reproach- 
ful outcries resound in the rear because of 
Harmony's narrow escape — the King's forefoot, 
missing that priceless bitch by a yard ! 

Our young gentleman, having got a lead now, 
begins to ride with more judgment. He trots 
up to a stile and pops over in truly artistic form ; 
better still, he gives the hounds plenty of room 
on the fallow beyond, where they have hovered 
for a moment and put down their noses, holding 
his hand up to warn those behind, a "bit of 



238 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

cheek," as they call this precautionary measure, 
which he will be made to remember for some 
days to come ! 

He is not such a fool but that he knows, from 
experience in the old country, how a little 
patience at these critical moments makes the 
whole difference between a good day's sport and 
a bad. It would be provoking to lose the chance 
of a gallop now, when he has got such a start, 
and is riding the best horse in his stable, so he 
looks anxiously over his shoulder for the hunts- 
man, who is coming, and stands fifty yards aloof, 
which he considers a liberal allowance, that the 
hounds may have space to swing. 

To-day there is a good scent and a good fox, 
a combination that happens oftener than might 
be supposed. Harmony, who, notwithstanding 
her recent peril, has never been off the line, 
though the others over-shot it, scours away at 
a tangent, with the slightest possible whimper, 
and her stern down, the leading hounds wheeling 
to her like pigeons, and the whole pack driving 
forward again, harder than before. 

It was a beautiful turn ; young Eapid would 
admire it, no doubt, were his attention not 
distracted by the gate out of the field, which is 
chained up, and a hurried calculation as to 
whether it is too high for the King to attempt. 

The solution is obvious. I need hardly say he 
jumps it gallantly in his stride. It would never 



THE SHIRES 239 

do, you see, to let those other fellows catch him, 
and he sails away once more with a stronger lead 
than at first. What a hunting panorama opens 
on his view ! — a downward stretch of a couple of 
miles, and a gentle rise beyond of more than 
twice that distance, consisting wholly of enormous 
grass fields, dotted here and there with single 
trees, and separated by long lines of fences, 
showing black and level on that faded expanse 
of green. The smoke from a farmhouse rises 
white and thin against the dull sky in the 
middle distance, and a taper church - spire 
points to heaven from behind the hill, other- 
wise there is not an object for miles to recall 
everyday life ; and young Kapid's world consists 
at this moment of two reeking pointed ears, 
with a vision of certain dim shapes, fleeting 
like shadows across the open — swift dusky, and 
noiseless as a dream. 

His blood thrills with excitement, from the 
crown of his close-cropped head to his silken- 
covered heel, but education is stronger than 
nature, and he tightens his lips, perhaps to 
repress a cheer, while he murmurs — " Over the 
brook for a hundred ! and the King never turned 
from water in his life." 

Two more fences bring him to the level 
meadow with its willows. Harmony is shaking 
herself on the farther bank, and he has marked 
with his eye the spot where he means to take off. 



240 BIDING RECOLLECTIONS 

A strong pull, a steady hand, the energy of a 
mile gallop condensed into a dozen strides, and 
the stream passes beneath him like a flash. 
" It's a rum one ! " he murmurs, standing up in 
his stirrups to ease the good horse, while one 
follower exclaims " Bravo ! Eapid. Go along, 
old man ! " as the speaker plunges overhead ; and 
another, who lands with a scramble, mutters, 

"D n him, I shall never catch him! my 

horse is done to a turn noiv.'" 

The King, his owner thinks is well worth the 
^350 that has not been paid. The horse has 
caught his second wind, and keeps striding on, 
strong and full of running, though temperate 
enough now, and, in such a country as this, a 
truly delightful mount. 

There is no denying that our friend is a 
capital horseman, and bold as need be. "The 
King of the Golden Mines," with a worhnan on 
his back, can hardly be defeated by any obstacle 
that the power and spring of a quadruped ought 
to surmount. He has tremendous stride, and no 
less courage than his master, so fence after fence 
is thrown behind the happy pair with a sensation 
like flying that seems equally gratifying to both. 
The ground is soft but sound enough ; the leaps, 
though large, are fair and clean. One by one 
they are covered iu light, elastic bounds, of 
eighteen or twenty feet, and for a mile, at least, 
the King scarcely alters his action, and never 



THE SHIBES 241 

changes his leg. Young Eapid would ask no 
better fun than to go on like this for a 
week. 

Once he has a narrow escape. The fox having 
turned short up a hedgerow after crossing it, the 
hounds, though running to kill, turn as short, 
for which they deserve the praise there is nobody 
present to bestow, and Eapid, charging the fence 
with considerable freedom, just misses landing 
in the middle of the pack. I know it, because 
he acknowledged it after dinner, professing, at 
the same time, devout thankfulness that master 
and huntsman were too far off to see. Just such 
another turn is made at the next fence, but this 
time on the near side. The hounds disappear 
suddenly, tumbling over each other into the ditch 
like a cascade. Peering between his horse's 
ears, the successful rider can distinguish only a 
confused whirl of muddy backs, and legs, and 
sterns, seen through a cloud of steam ; but 
smothered growls, with a certain vibration of 
the busy cluster, announce that they have got 
him, and Eapid so far forgets himself as to 
venture on a feeble " Who — whoop ! " 

Before he can leap from the saddle the hunts- 
man comes up follow^ed by two others, one of 
whom, pulling out his watch, with a delighted 
face repeats frantically, " Seven-and-twenty 
minutes, and a kill in the open ! What a good 
gallop ! Not the ghost of a check from end to 

16 



^42 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

end. Seven-and-twenty minutes," and so on, 
over and over again. 

While the field straggle in, and the obsequies 
of this good fox are properly celebrated, a little 
enthusiasm would be justifiable enough on the 
part of a young gentleman who has had the best 
of it unquestionably through the whole of so 
brilliant a scurry. He might be expected to 
enlarge volubly, and with excusable self -conscious- 
ness, on the pace, the country, the straight 
running of the fox, the speed and gallantry of the 
hounds ; nor could we blame him for praising by 
implication his own determined riding in a 
tribute to " The King of the Golden Mines." 

But such extravagancies are studiously 
repudiated and repressed by the school to which 
young Eapid belongs. All he does say is this — 

" I wonder when the second horse will come 
up ? I want some luncheon before we go and 
find another fox." 

I have already observed that in the shires we 
put two days into one. Where seventy or eighty 
couple of hounds are kept and thirty horses, to 
hunt four times a week, with plenty of country, 
in which you may find a fox every five minutes, 
there can be no reason for going home while light 
serves ; and really good scenting days occur so 
rarely that we may well be tempted to make the 
most of one even with jaded servants and a 
half-tired pack of hounds. The field, too, are 



THE SHIBES 243 

considerably diininislied by three or four o'clock. 
One has no second horse, another must get home 
to write his letters, and, if within distance of 
Melton, some hurry back to play whist. Every- 
thing is comparative. With forty or fifty horse- 
men left, a huntsman breathes more freely, and 
these, who are probably enthusiasts, begin to 
congratulate themselves that the best of the day 
is yet to come. " Let us go and draw Melton 
Spinney," is a suggestion that brightens every 
eye ; and the Duke will always draw Melton 
Spinney so long as he can see. It is no unusual 
thing for his hounds to kill, and, I have been told 
they once found their fox by moonlight, so that 
it is proverbial all over his country, if you only 
stop out late enough, you are sure of a run with 
the Belvoir at last. And then, whether you 
belong to the school of young Eapid or his father, 
you will equally have a treat. Are you fond of 
hounds ? Here is a pack that cannot be surpassed, 
to delight the most fastidious eye, satisfy the 
most critical taste. Do you like to see them 
hunt ? Watch how these put their noses down, 
tempering energy with patience, yet so bustling 
and resolute as to work a bad scent into a good 
one. Are you an admirer of make-and- shape ? 
Mark this perfect symmetry of form, bigger, 
stronger, and tougher than it looks. Do you 
understand kennel management and condition ? 
Ask Gillard why his hounds are never known 



244 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

to tire, and get from him what hints you 
can. 

Lastly, do you want to gallop and jump, defeat 
your dearest friends, and get to the end of your 
best horse ? That is but a moderate scenting- 
day, on which the Belvoir will not afford 
opportunity to do both. If you can live with 
them while they run, and see them race into 
their fox at the finish, I congratulate you on 
having science, nerve, all the qualities of horse- 
manship, a good hunter, and, above all, a good 
groom. 

These remarks as to pace, stoutness, and 
sporting qualities, apply also to the Quorn, the 
Cottesmore, and the Pytchley. This last, indeed, 
with its extensive range of woodlands in 
Eockingham Forest, possesses the finest hunting 
country in England, spacious enough to stand 
six days a week in the mildest of winters all the 
season through. Under the rule of Lord Spencer, 
who has brought to bear on his favourite amuse- 
ment the talent, energy, and administrative 
powers that, while they remained in ofiice, were 
so serviceable to his party, the Pytchley seems 
to have recovered its ancient renown, and the 
sport provided for the white collars during the 
last year or two has been much above the average. 
His lordship thoroughly understands the whole 
management of hounds, in the kennel and the 
field, is enthusiastically fond of the pursuit, and. 



THE SHIBES 245 

being a very determined rider as well as an 
excellent judge of a horse, is always present in 
an emergency to observe the cause and take 
measures for the remedy. Will Goodall has but 
little to learn as a huntsman, and, like his father, 
the unrivalled Will Goodall of Belvoir celebrity, 
places implicit confidence in his hounds. " They 
can put me right," seems his maxim, " oftener 
than I can put them ! " If a man wanted to see 
a gallop in the shires at its best, he should meet 
the Pytchley some Saturday in February at 
Waterloo Gorse, but I am bound to caution him 
that he ought to ride a brilliant hunter, and, as 
young Eapid would say, " harden his heart " to 
make strong use of him. 

Large grass fields, from fifty to a hundred 
acres in extent, carrying a rare scent, are indeed 
tempting ; but to my own taste, though perhaps 
in this my reader may not agree with me, they 
would be more inviting were they not separated 
by such forbidding fences. A high blackthorn 
hedge, strong enough to hold an elephant, with 
one, and sometimes two ditches, fortified, 
moreover, in many cases, by a rail placed half a 
horse's length off to keep out cattle from the 
thorns, offers, indeed, scope for all the nobler 
qualities of man and beast, but while sufficiently 
perilous for glory, seems to my mind rather too 
stiff for pleasure ! 

And yet I have seen half-a-dozen good men 



246 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

well-mounted live with hounds over this country 
for two or three miles on end without a fall, nor 
do I believe that in these stiffly fenced grazing 
grounds the average of dirty coats is greater than 
in less difficult-looking districts. It may be that 
those who compete are on the best of hunters, 
and that a horse finds all his energies roused 
by the formidable nature of such obstacles, if he 
means to face them at all ! 

And now a word about those casualties which 
perhaps rather enhance than damp our ardour in 
the chase. 

Mr. Assheton Smith used to say that no man 
could be called a good rider who did not hioiv 
how to fall. Founded on his own exhaustive 
experience there is much sound wisdom in this 
remark. The oftener a man is down, the less 
likely is he to be hurt, and although, as the old 
joke tells us, absence of body as regards danger 
seems even preferable to presence of mind, the 
latter quality is not without its advantage in the 
crisis that can no longer be deferred. 

I have seen men so flurried when their horses' 
noses touched the ground as to fling themselves 
wildly from the saddle, and meet their own 
apprehensions half-way, converting an uncertain 
scramble into a certain downfall. Now it should 
never be forgotten that a horse in difficulties has 
the best chance of recovery if the rider sits quiet 
in the middle of his saddle and lets the animal's 



THE SHIRES 247 

head alone. It is always time enough to part 
company when his own knee touches the ground, 
and as he then knows exactly where his horse is, 
he can get out of the way of its impending body, 
ere it comes heavily to the earth. If his seat is 
not strong enough to admit of such desirable 
tenacity, let him at least keep a firm hold of the 
bridle ; that connecting link will, so to speak, 
preserve his communications, and a kick with 
one foot, or timely roll of his own person, will 
take him out of harm's way. 

The worst fall a man can get is to be thrown 
over his horse's head, with such violence as to 
lay him senseless till the animal, turning a 
somersault, crushes his prostrate body with all the 
weight of its o^vn. Such accidents must some- 
times happen, of course, but they are not 
necessarily of every-day occurrence. By riding 
with moderate speed at his fences, and preserving, 
on all occasions, coolness, good-humour, and 
confidence in his partner, a sportsman, even 
when past his prime, may cross the severest 
parts of the Harborough country itself with an 
infinitesimal amount of danger to life and limb. 
Kindness, coercion, hand, seat, valour, and dis- 
cretion should be combined in due proportion, 
and the mixture, as far as the hunting-field is 
concerned, will come out a real elixir vitce such 
as the pale Eosicrucian poring over crucible and 
alembic sought to compound in vain. 



248 BIDING BECOLLECTIONS 

I cannot forbear quoting once more from the 
gallant soul-stirring lines of Mr. Bromley 
Davenport, himself an enthusiast who, to this 
day, never seems to remember he has a neck 
to break ! 

" Wliat is time ? the effusion of life zoophytic, 

In dreary pursuit of position or gain. 
What is life ? the absorption of vapours mephitic, 

The bursting of sunlight on senses and brain. 
Such a life has been mine, though so speedily over, 

Condensing the joys of a century's course. 
From the find, till they ate him near Woodwell-Head Covei't, 

In thirty bright minutes from Banksborough Gorse I " 

Yes, when all is said and done, perhaps the very 
acme and perfection of a riding run, is to be 
attained within fifteen miles of Melton. A man 
who has once been fortunate enough to find 
himself, for ever so short a distance, leading 

" The cream of the cream, in the shire of shires," 

will never, I imagine, forget his feelings of 
triumph and satisfaction while he occupied so 
proud a position ; nor do I think that, as a 
matter of mere amusement and pleasurable 
excitement, life can offer anything to compare 
with a good horse, a good conscience, a good 
start and 

" A quick thirty minutes from Banksborough Gorse." 

UNVPIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKINO AND liONDON. 



